The Architect of Fate
by Xepheria
Summary: Fifty years into the future, in a world ruled by Voldemort, Harry Potter is tired of life. Labelled a terrorist, he has spent the past twenty years trying to change things, immersing himself in obscure magics of the most powerful kind. Finally, his plans are coming to fruition, and they will shake the universe to its very core. Currently undergoing a full rewrite, update on profile
1. Chapter 1 - Preparations

**This is going to be quite a dark fic – not for the faint hearted. I appreciate any reviews and constructive criticism, though any flaming or unreasonable attacks at me will not be tolerated. I'll try to answer any questions you might have, without giving away key plot points. Be prepared for a story of epic proportions, spanning universes, with gods, demons, love and betrayal. You're in for one hell of a ride.**

**I don't own Harry Potter in the slightest. I wish I did though. ;-;**

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_**Chapter One - Preparations**_

Harry Potter had been called many things over the course of his life. Boy-Who-Lived. Freak. Saviour. Terrorist. Friend. Liar. Lover. The-Man-Who-Won. Leader-of-the-Light. Any manner of hyphenated nonsense that the Wizarding public could conceive, really.

None of it mattered.

In his long life, most of it in conflict of some sort, he'd had everything he held dear ripped away from him, by death, disease, tragedy, betrayal. The whole collection. He'd seen it all. Ron; finally driven to insanity and suicide by the mental illness inflicted upon him by the cognivores in the Department of Mysteries, after years of struggle. Ginny; his wife of five years, who he found had drugged him full of love potions to gain and reinforce his affections, from 5th year onwards. She was now divorced and locked in Azkaban for attempted line theft and usage of Amortentia, possibly the most powerful love potion in existence. He still felt a lingering feeling for shame for falling for such an obvious trick, disregarding the suspicions of his friends.

His beloved children, murdered, kidnapped, tortured.

His dear friend Neville, one with his parents at last, having been held under the Cruciatus for hours.

The love of his life, Hermione, captured whilst working on a project, an arithmancy formula for a spell that identified and incapacitated people possessing the Dark Mark. She was returned to him in pieces by owl post, day by day. He still, after all these years, felt incomplete without her. He never realised how much she meant to him until after she was gone.

He had nothing.

He was supposed to be the saviour, but he had gotten them all killed. The surviving remnants of the Light were held as slaves, tortured for the amusement of Death Eaters, the corpses on public display for all to see, reminders of the fate of anyone who dared stand against _Him_, now the supreme leader of all magical peoples.

In the years of peace that followed the Battle of Hogwarts, the wizards and witches of England had grown complacent. The threat was over, they reasoned, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (another absurdly hyphenated title), finally dead and gone, _His_ Death Eaters consigned to the depths of Azkaban, never to see the light of day again. The auror budget was reduced to nothing, spread amongst the pockets of the bureaucrats at the top of the system. Another one of his regrets. He hadn't bothered to use his heightened fame to push for change in the Wizarding world, to fix all of the backwards customs and bigoted laws. Instead, he preferred to fade into anonymity, intent on finally being able to live the life he never had, and probably never would.

They were all woefully unprepared.

The third coming swept across Britain, Europe, the entirety of the planet, a plague of darkness, feasting, revelling in the fear and misery that they spread. Demons, wraiths, dark creatures of all manner of shapes and sizes, brought to being by _Him,_ coupled with legions of Death Eaters and dark supporters.

They had no chance. There was no mercy. No attempt at parlay. No hope for survival.

Millions died. Entire races of sentients, snuffed, like candles in the wind. There were no ministries anymore, replaced instead by Baronies, tracts of land governed and ruled by those under _His _service, all with their own laws, snarling and rending one another over mere scraps of land and power, yet all, ultimately, answered to _Him._ Wars were fought over things that, just fifty years prior would have been commonplace, hardly even thought about. Grain. Medicines. Water. Any commodities were ruthlessly hoarded amongst the pureblooded elite, intent on keeping the masses down, the peoples of the Baronies directing their angers against one another, instead of the true cause of their suffering. A brilliant strategy, all this considered.

Harry Potter was tired. Tired of all the war, the suffering, the death. Was a normal life so much to much to ask for? One where he could live in peace, without the basilisks, demons and Death Eaters constantly nipping at his heels. Someone up there must be laughing, taking a perverse pleasure in throwing him into life threatening situations. Trouble seemed to have an unhealthy infatuation with him, drawn to him like a moth to a flame, constantly present. No, he would never be normal.

As he slowly, painstakingly carved some of the final touches of what was going to be his masterpiece, he reminisced. Was he, after all this time, any better than _Him? _He too had killed, mercilessly, without so much as a second thought, resorting to ever darker rituals, fouler magicks in order to further his own goals. Goals, that were, admittedly, far more noble than his counterpart's, however dark he had become. He wondered if his pieces on the great cosmic chessboard, at which he and Tom duelled for the fate of the planet, had slowly, ever so slowly, darkened, transitioning from white, to grey, to black, until the entire board was a field of darkness, black fighting black in an indiscriminate massacre, friends on friends, family on family. He grimaced. Yes, that was an apt metaphor for the current state of affairs.

He added a touch of a parselmagic, a hissing, living rune, snaking through and binding the layers upon layers of symbols together, the thousands of different languages, of creatures, and men, of Gods and slaves, linked together, twisting, harmonising as the magic pulsed through them. Ancient Sumerian and Egyptian hieroglyphs, High Elvish and Dwarven stonescript, all working in tandem, cultures and races spanning the eons of history, coming together for what would perhaps be the single greatest act of magic since the Severing of Atlantis. It truly was a sight to behold.

With a final pulse of light and magic, the runes settled, scripts highlighted in a faint red glow. Harry stepped back, and marvelled at the sight of his handiwork; a black cave two hundred metres tall, walls completely covered in iridescent runes, with obsidian stalactites several feet thick jutting down from the ceiling, great purple-black daggers, looking as if built for rending the heavens themselves. The floor was a set of layers, a 3 dimensional ritual array, a perfect ring, on top of which was an enormous tridecagram, and then another ring at the centre of that. A septagram and pentagram were layered on top in a similar fashion. Thirteen, seven, five. The most magical numbers, for the most magical event of the millennia. At the centre of it all rose an ornate golden spire, reaching up halfway to the ceiling, surrounded by the alchemical essences of many of his past conquests.

Now, _that _had been a bitch to make.

His late mentor in alchemy and ancient magicks, Nicholas Flamel, had passed away before passing on the secret of noble metal synthesis, finally running out of his stockpiled Elixir of Life, and with the current state of the world there was a snowball's chance in hell that he could have obtained it naturally, not that it would have been pure enough anyway. The slightest imperfection or the smallest quantity of foreign metals could have messed up the ritual completely. It needed to be flawless in order to conduct the vast amounts of magic that would be passing through it.

As such, he had to resort to other means, spending the last three years researching and creating a bastardised Philosopher's Stone, a dark grey instead of the usual crimson, using the lifeblood of kidnapped Death Eaters and baronial officials. It was by no means perfect –the sacrifices were corrupted, being forcibly taken, and it was missing a critical reagent so closely hoarded by Tom that it was virtually extinct. As such, his stone couldn't create the elixir of life, merely able to infuse his life-force with that of those trapped inside, healing injuries and increasing vitality. It also couldn't conduct magic nearly so well as the original (which was perhaps the best magical conductor in existence), and as such would eventually shatter from the backlog of ambient magic trapped inside. It was of no concern. It would be sufficient for his purposes, for now at least.

Now he had only a few loose ends to tie up. Firstly, the transfer of essentials that he wished to keep after the ritual into extra-dimensional space. His wands, the stone, the cloak, his staves and various other powerful odds and ends that he had picked up over the years. It was unfortunate that he currently didn't have the power to store and sustain living creatures in the space between dimensions. He would have loved to keep his familiar, Samuel, a basilisk-runespoor hybrid after the ritual. He shed a small tear at the thought. His last remaining friend after all these years, consigned to death, unless he found a way to perform a self-sustaining stasis spell within the next month. He could still hope.

Secondly, he needed to recover the final horcrux from its resting place. Tom had no idea he had discovered it, quite by accident in fact. In his travels, hiding from the ever-searching gaze of the dark officials deep within the forests of Sweden, he happened upon a truly monstrous bleached-white yew, stretching over fifty metres tall, gnarled roots winding and twisting through the surrounding forest, shrouded by some of the blackest magicks in existence. Tom always had had a flair for dramatics.

Using his extensive Dark Arts knowledge, he had slowly, carefully, removed the majority of the wards surrounding the tree, all of them nasty, leaving in place those which would have alerted Tom to his presence, choosing to bypass them instead. He shuddered in remembrance of the contents of the defences; anyone less skilled that he would have surely died a slow, excruciating manner, paralyzed, skin flayed from their body, eyes turned inwards into their heads, organs cannibalising themselves from the inside. Worst of all, however, were the runes that kept the intruder alive far longer than naturally possible, sentient, and sane, whilst being made to watch what was happening to their body from an outside perspective, helpless to prevent it. Truly horrific.

Imagine his surprise when, stepping into an cavernous hollow at the base of the tree, below the main trunk, he saw Gryffindor's girdle, suspended in mid-air over a black pedestal. He had actually laughed aloud at the man… no, thing's arrogance, leaving his final soul anchor floating for all to see. In all honesty, he had been slightly disappointed at the lack of imagination with the defences. Where were the dragons, the burning pits of lava, hell, even some inferi could have spiced the place up a bit. Filing the location away for future use, he had decided to leave the girdle, just on the off chance that Tom had put wards on it that he hadn't noticed.

Depositing the last of his personal effects into a place outside of dimensions, he muttered a brief incantation and waved his hand to close the tear in reality. He focused inwardly, gathering his magic to apparate to Sweden. Cross-border apparition was hard, the remnants of ministry wards surrounding the countries doing the best they could to interfere with magical transportation. He couldn't afford something to go wrong, like appearing in the middle of a Barony, not at this crucial stage. Being undesirable number one was not the most convenient of things.

Blinking into existence underneath an arching root, Harry smirked to himself. He doubted Tom, in all the arrogance befitting of Magical Emperor, Fürher of the Dark, had even considered the possibility of someone finding the location of his last horcrux, much less daring to bypass his defences. The Dark Lord truly had become complacent in his years of ruling, far too confident in his own power.

As he clambered through the roots on his path to the hollow, he wondered why Tom had chosen here of all places to keep it. It wasn't particularly remote, and the tree stood out like a fox in a henhouse, hardly the most inconspicuous of locations. It made him suspicious. There was something he was missing. He could feel it.

Entering the wooden chamber, he levitated the girdle from its floating resting place into a specially warded pouch on his belt, scowling in distaste as he felt the sickening black aura surrounding the ancient artefact was over his skin. So far so good.

Harry popped back to his hideout, entering the ritual chamber and climbing up the layers of stone shapes, striding towards the towering golden spear at the centre of the room. Levitating himself the hundred metres into the air to reach the tip, he retrieved the girdle from its warded pouch, and waved his hand to suspend it directly over the centre of the spire, much like Tom had done for its original hiding place.

"_Tenebrae tegere_"he incanted, an opaque shield forming around the girdle, to protect his creation from the foul, potentially corrupting aura that surrounded it. There was no sign of anything having gone wrong yet, but still, he was suspicious.

Though not truly necessary for the ritual, Harry had decided to incorporate it as a central piece, intent on channelling some of the immense power that would flow through his creation into the horcrux, leaving the world with a final parting gift. After he was done, Tom's soul would never again be reborn, completely removed from the cycle of life and death. It was a fitting retribution for everything Tom had done in his miserable existence, the final revenge of everyone he had stripped the life from over the years.

Finally, everything was in place.

Now all that were left were the sacrifices.

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**A/N: You can probably expect a chapter every two to seven days, depending on my mood and if my creative juices are flowing. If it's going to be longer than that, and I know in advance, I'll let you know in the author's notes at the top of the page. Other important announcements will also be up there. As for the length of the story, with the current plan I have, it could easily span several hundred thousand words, if I choose not to break it up into separate books. If you have any advice, ideas you want to offer, or questions about the fic, leave a review and I'll get around to answering you. **


	2. Chapter 2 - The Ritual

**Here we go, chapter two already, I kind of went on a massive writing spree. Overall, I'm pleased how it turned out.**

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_**Chapter Two – The Ritual**_

Between the remnants of the countries formerly known as Switzerland and Austrian, some thirty kilometres east of the Barony of Lichtenstein existed a grand citadel, of towering white spires and archways, built into the side of a mountain. In a time long since forgotten, before the Dark Emperor came into power, it was said to have been the centre of the wizarding world, the home of the ICW, the governing body that served to manage magic and its user on a global level. It was a bastion of hope and progress, a dream of removing borders between the wizards and witches of the world, to unify countries under one banner.

The hopes and dreams that it embodied died the day _he _came, staining the towering white spires black with the blood of its inhabitants.

Now, it served as the centre of the dark empire in Europe, one of six such fortresses across the globe, and was the preferred residence of the Dark Lord himself, sustaining its black opulence with the lifeblood of the subjugated across the continent.

Officially, it had no real name, merely called '_Centre One'_ in official texts and documentation.

Amongst the crushed masses, however, there existed a word for the home of the dark god, high in the mountains, a word whispered from person to person, family to family, lest his servants take it as a sign of dissent.

'_Pandemonium_'.

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Deep within this dark citadel, a being, no longer human, lounged in a throne, looking impassively down upon a pathetic, snivelling creature bowed at his feet.

"-and the taxes from Notton continue to flow smoothly into your coffers, at a rate of-."

Dull barely described the wretch before him, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from cursing the man's intestines to constrict around his oesophagus, if only to silence the incessant droning. It had been more than fifty years since the Dark Lord, once known as Tom Riddle, now Voldemort, had taken the throne, and to be frank, he was _bored_, apathetic even. There were no more insurrections, no more rebellions – people were far too afraid to even think badly of him, any dissenting opinions mercilessly crushed in a world where your very thoughts were monitored. The last notable resistor, Harry Potter, perhaps his one true equal on the planet, had vanished from sight some twenty years ago, and, despite his best efforts, he had been unable to locate him. Those responsible for _that_ failed operation were no longer of this world, in any case, and any leads on his nemesis had long since dried up.

As much as he hated, no, loathed his opposite from the core of his being, he did hold a grudging respect for his quite formidable power. Potter's disappearance had been quite the shame, his only remaining source of entertainment hiding like a rat in a sewer, hiding amongst the filth. Torturing people to death and enslaving families just didn't do it anymore, for the whole world was his, and had been for half a century. There was no fun in committing acts of evil if the subjects didn't resist at all, and simply resigned themselves to their fates.

Often he even considered allowing faux rebellion to rise – nothing too major, of course, with their every move being unknowingly controlled and overseen by a shadow entity, under his direct command. It wouldn't do to have them grow into a serious destabiliser for his world order. He would just use it to allow the sheep a false sense of hope, which could then be ruthlessly crushed, so he could relish in their cries of sorrow as he tore their dreams apart. Yes, that could work. Something to look into for the future, perhaps?

In the meantime, however, he had to deal with the true evil of the world; tax reports. He shuddered. The person who had concieved the idea of endless droning on about money, which was of no consequence to him anyway, deserved to die in a thousand painful, gruesome was a worse torture than any he could envision.

"-with the Baronies of Tirenster and Malfior once again contribu-"

The great doors of his throne room slammed open, and a young man, no more than twenty years old ran into the hall, prostrating himself at the base of the dais. The Dark Lord raised a single, hairless eyebrow, and leaned forward in his throne. Anything to distract him from this pointless babble.

"My lord, the Head of Internal Affairs requests an audience for a matter most urgent."

Interesting. It wasn't often that the department under the control of Scorpius Malfoy had problems that required his personal attention. He was usually a most efficient and effective servant, one of the best in his ranks. Perhaps this day could be somewhat entertaining after all.

"Very well. Fetch him at once." Voldemort drawled, dismissing the young man with a wave of his hand. He turned to look at the financial official, who was looking quite incensed at being interrupted in the middle of his oh-so-important speech.

"You."

"Milord?" The man stammered, terrified now that he had Voldemort's full attention, the black aura that permeated the room now focused entirely on him.

"Get out of my sight. Find someone of equal mindlessness to give your report, before I decide to splinter your bones and feed you to a kraken. I do not ever want to have the displeasure of seeing your face again. Now, begone!"

The man turned and shuffled towards the doorway, careful to keep his face low – you did not assume that the Dark Lord spoke empty words, not if you wanted to keep your life, that is, so any commands had to be taken quite literally.

"MOVE!" Voldemort bellowed, flicking his wrist. The wandless magic sent the pitiful wretch careening through entrance to the hall, impacting an outside wall with a thud. Voldemort doubted the man would die, merely suffer from broken bones. Maybe he'd never be able to walk properly again. The thought filled him with glee.

He _hated_ bureaucrats.

Scorpius Malfoy strode into the room, crimson cloak billowing behind him, reminiscent of one Severus Snape, before kneeling at the base of the throne. Malfoys always had a penchant for dramatics. The generations hadn't changed that.

"My Lord." Scorpius bowed his head, averting his eyes in the respect befitting an Emperor.

"Young Scorpius, such a pleasure to see you once again." Voldemort said, with an almost friendly tone. The Malfoys had always been loyal to a fault, and were some of the most valuable of his servants – indeed, it was Scorpius' father who had led the effort to revive him for the third time.

"Stand, my dear Scorpius. There is no need for you to kneel like some common palace servant. You are one of my most favoured."

Scorpius rose, nodding his head in gratitude at the generosity of his Master. He only hoped that he would remain as amiable after he delivered his news. Being near Voldemort when he was in a wrathful mood shortened your life expectancy considerably.

"My Lord, I come with the gravest of tidings. There have been reports across many of the Baronies of Death Eaters and officials vanishing without a trace, sometimes in the middle of their homes. The perpetrators left no clues, no messages, no evidence to say if this is the work of an organisation, or an individual. All investigations into the matter have drawn blanks, and any witnesses to the disappearances were found with a thrice tied obliviation in their minds, removing any chance of extracting information in this manenr"

The Dark Lord's eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. "Impossible. We would have caught on to the movements of any unsanctioned organisations able to do such a thing. A traitor perhaps?"

"If I may, my lord." Voldemort motioned for Scorpius to speak.

"Discounting the ongoing investigation of Internal Affairs, I personally suspect it to be the work of an individual, someone who could have the power to slip past wards completely undetected, and lock magicals completely out of their own minds, even those who are proficient at occlumency. The only problem with this hypothesis is the subject in question has not been seen for the past twenty years."

"Potter." The Dark Lord hissed, almost slipping into parseltongue in his rage. The air in the room became heavy, as if the environment itself was echoing the displeasure of its ruler. Fifty years ago, he never would have suspected it of the man – as a boy, Potter was weak, indoctrinated into the old fool Dumbledore's way of thinking, too afraid to kill. In the years of the third war, though, he had grown hard, cruel even, as he lost everything that he loved, the things that bound him to sanity, and the Light. He was not afraid to make sacrifices, to kill mercilessly in order to achieve his aims, a lesson far too many of his Death Eaters had learned all too late.

"Who are among the taken? Anyone of note?"

"Many are low ranking, My Lord, and of no real consequence. However, included in their number are the Nott scion and Dresden Lestrange, who were spirited out of their chambers in their personal Baronial fortresses. As of the most recent count, the total number of disappearances comes out to precisely four hundred and fifty five, though there may be some disappearances still yet unaccounted for."

Voldemort's fury was almost visible, rising from his throne like a rearing serpent. The urge to strike down the Malfoy heir in a horrific manner grew almost irresistible, a spell at the tip of his tongue. He caught himself. It wouldn't do to smite one of his most effective servants in a fit of rage for something out of the man's control.

What worried him most, however, was the number of people that had disappeared. Four hundred and fifty five. Thirteen multiplied by seven, multiplied again by five. An extremely potent magical number. These were not random kidnappings, aimed at destabilising his world order. No, they were a sign of something far more sinister. Potter was evidently preparing a ritual of some sort, and a powerful one at that, if the number was anything to go by. He couldn't think of many known dark rituals that required that specific number of sacrifices – the summoning of greater demons was the principle of them, and he doubted that even Potter would be foolish enough to attempt that. He himself had never tried to call forth, far too wary of the cunning of the rulers of demons, and their tendency to find loopholes in the magical contracts with which they were summoned in order to kill the summoner. Demons simply did not like to be bound to mortals, and their rulers even less so. History was littered with the corpses of Dark Lords who had tried, and failed, to summon demons and bend them to their will. They were all annihilated with extreme prejudice, and he, despite all of his efforts to ensure immortality, was determined not to become one of them.

That led to the conclusion that it was a ritual of Potter's own devising. He honestly couldn't say if he felt better about that or not, for a known evil was far less intimidating than an unknown, and potentially greater evil. It was a stratagem that he himself had employed many times, to keep his opponents off guard, or better yet, dead. Whatever unknown thing this ritual would accomplish, however, unnerved him to his very core, though he would never admit to the fact in front of any living soul. Whatever Potter had planned was sure to not be pleasant for him, in the event that it couldn't be stopped.

"Wilma!"

A diminutive house elf popped into the space in front of the throne.

"Master calls for Wilma?"

"Fetch me a muggle family, and be quick about it. I am in a most foul mood, and I'm sure you don't want to be on the receiving end of what I want to inflict upon something" The house elf gave a squeak of fright and _popped_ into thin air.

"Scorpius, you may wish to leave. I do not wish to harm one of my most favoured, but with the mood I am in, it may become inevitable should you stay. I expect a full investigation. Do not displease me, or it may be the last thing you ever do."

Scorpius turned to leave, walking towards the great black doors that lead back to the main hallways of Pandemonium. If one were to observe the man closely, they would observe an almost unnoticeable shaking, as he thanked entire pantheons of gods for allowing him to survive that encounter unscathed.

All of a sudden, a shining silver phoenix burst into the throne room, illuminating the ornate chamber with holy light. Scorpius halted in his tracks, and turned towards the source staring at it in disbelief. It was a patronus, but more specifically, the form of _Potter's_ patronus. He was almost tempted to bolt from the throne room, so as to avoid the rage that was sure to come about as a result of the message. The argent bird let loose a burst of phoenix song, which caused a shudder to run up the Dark Lord's body in reaction to the holy music, before it began to speak in a voice unheard in over twenty years.

"Tom my old friend, it's been too long." Voldemort hissed in displeasure at the use of his birth name. "As I'm sure you are already aware by this, I have borrowed quite a number of your faithful slaves, four hundred and fifty five to be exact. If you haven't heard by now, well, I wouldn't want to be a servant near you right now. You're probably wondering what I plan on doing with such an auspicious quantity of innocent – no wait, they aren't innocent, they're foul, murdering sycophants to an even fouler master. Let's try that again. You're probably wondering what I'm going to do with so many not-quite-willing sacrifices, and I'll tell you. Actually, no I won't. You'll get the idea soon enough. All I ask is that you, and any servants you might have in that resplendent throne room you seem to spend most of your time in merely look out the window, eastwards, and enjoy the show."

* * *

Some one and a half thousand kilometres north east of the citadel of Pandemonium, Harry Potter allowed a small grin to show on his features. It was finally time for his swan song. All his plans, all his preparation for the last twenty years had been leading up to this one moment. He would finally have the chance to right the wrongs of the past, and regain a part of himself that he had given up as long since lost – Hermione, and with her, his humanity.

Whispering a brief incantation in parseltongue, he floated up unaided to his position in the ritual, directly over the tip of the golden spire, and the enshrouded horcrux. He still remembered that day, all those years ago, when he had first encountered Voldemort using the very same spell to pursue him in his flight from the Dursleys. Breathing in deeply, he began to chant an incantation, no, a prayer to the great forces of the universe, words that would start the activation sequence of the ritual, and help to focus the energies to what he desired.

_O terra matre, exaudi orationem meanus  
Offero vos sacrificium  
Eorum qui pecca verintmihi præsta potentia feriendi  
Autem ponere orbem fuissemus quasi_

_O patrem tempore, laesi fuerimus vos  
Sit historiae iuris malorum future  
Te iudicem, dicibus, carnifex  
Sinite me transire iudicium,  
Et corrigi orbis mala_

_Dico ergo et sic fiat!_

As he incanted, the runes of the room began to thrum, waves of magic rippling through the air, tangible in their immense power. All four hundred and fifty five captives began to scream in unison, their bodies slowly disintegrating, and their very souls being pulled into the outermost matrix of runic energy. For the scale of the ritual, the four hundred-something sacrifices were not nearly sufficient – indeed, to directly supply the ritual its power would have required the sacrifice of millions, no, tens of millions of lives. Unwilling to harm innocents for his own ends, however, Harry had sought a way around this. For the first time in since the age of the druids, the natural energies of the earth were being harnessed by humans, the sacrifices merely serving as a catalyst, a spark to trigger the inferno that was now building up.

Slowly, the layers of stone that formed the ritual array began to rotate, each layer spinning opposite to that the one below. As they sped up, the runes that formed the room oscillated ever brighter, so bright, in fact that they would have blinded someone a thousand times over, had there been anyone else present.

With the final words of the incantation, the magic in the room came to a cadence, climaxing in a final wave of white-blue light that emanated from the intricate scripts, originating from the inner circle of the array, branching outwards, down the layers, then up the walls and ceiling, before arcing down from each of the obsidian stalactites, through the air into the base of the golden spire.

Previously dull symbols etched into the ornate golden spear began to activate, drawing in the magic in the room, causing magic to reach down into the Earth's crust, tapping into the nexus of the single greatest concentration of leylines on the planet, siphoning the very essence of the planet itself into the ritual.

Amidst all this was the horcrux, floating beneath Harry. It too was slowly being drawn into the tip of the spire, like all other magic in the room. However, unlike everything else, the Horcrux actively did not want to be pulled in, and, with its limited sentience, began lashing out in a vain attempt avert its destruction. As the last of its essence was sucked inwards, and with it, the contained fragment of Voldemort's soul, a thin tendril of dark magic struck, by some stroke of fate, unknown to Harry, one of the power regulation runes etched into the metal.

This rune was of particular importance, controlling the negative feedback loop that kept the ritual from drawing too much power from Mother Earth. With it damaged, the ritual began to drain more and more power, accumulating magic in quantities unseen in the entirety of the Earth's history. Around the ritual site, animals and plants began to wither and die, as their very life forces were absorbed into the ever accumulating mass of power, deep below the ground.

Harry was panicking. This wasn't supposed to be happening – there was far too much magic in the system. Nothing in his calculations had indicated even the slightest possibility of this occurring. Had he made an error in his carvings, despite the inordinate number of times that he'd checked and rechecked each tiny symbol? It was far too late to stop the process now though; to do so would result in the release of the entire quantity of raw magic stored at the base of the spire, which could have any number of unknown effects, even potentially erasing every living thing on the planet from time itself. No, he had to let it continue, and hope beyond all hopes that the magic would follow some shred of what it had been directed to do.

The ritual finally crested, expelling all of the stored energy into a beam so bright it rivalled a supernova in its brilliance, obliterating Harry's body before he even had a chance to scream, continuing upwards through the earth, annihilating everything in its path. The ruins of Hogwarts above, atomised as it ascended towards the heavens.

* * *

_Five minutes earlier…_

Voldemort was completely, utterly spooked. There was no other word for it. He and Scorpius looked eastwards, observing from the very peak of his citadel, the centre of his empire, waiting for whatever it was that Potter had planned. Before this, everything running perfectly, too perfectly, to the point where he was bored, even. Now, though? Even immortals such as he could only handle so much excitement in one day.

The worst thing of all was the horrifying feeling of powerlessness. He was Lord Voldemort, Emperor of All Things, the greatest Dark Lord to have ever lived, and (to his own mind) the single most powerful individual on the planet. And yet, with all of his might, all of his immense magical prowess he could not alleviate the feeling of dread that penetrated straight through to what was left of his soul.

As he considered the implications of Potter's words, he began to feel _it_. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. It was as if all the magic on the planet were being drawn towards some unknown source, far to the north-east.

Good Gods, what in the Seven Hells was Potter doing? Not even he, the greatest mage to have ever graced the Earth, would have ever considered wielding the amount of power he felt at work here. It was absolutely monstrous. He couldn't think of anything that could possibly use it.

A brilliant white beam burst from the ground, and across a million, billion Earth's, all the Voldemorts to ever exist began to scream in unison.

The beam ripped through the atmosphere, stretching every higher, sucking in the surrounding ambient magic like some kind of hyper-charged magnet, feeding off the natural presence of the universe itself. The levels of power present at this point were so high that the light, a weightless, immaterial expression of pure energy, began to take on a physical presence, breaking all known and unknown laws of physics in doing so. Inexplicably, as the mass of the beam increased, so did its velocity, breaking the universal speed limit that is the speed of light, warping the very fabric of space and time around it. Stars, nebulae, entire galaxies were consumed in its passing, feeding from their near infinite energy until reaching the critical pass, at which point it pierced straight through the veil that held the universe together.

Much like a deflating balloon, energy rushed out of the hole, until, unable to sustain itself any longer, reality collapsed in on itself, and simply ceased to exist.

* * *

**Didn't expect that, now did you? Don't worry, there's more to come, I just don't know how I'm going to top the destruction of a universe, even if it was accidental ;-;**

**English translation of the Latin ritual:**

_**Oh mother earth, hear my plea  
I offer you sacrifice  
Grant me the power to strike down those who have sinned  
and correct the evils of the world**_

_**Oh father time, how we have wronged you  
Let us change the history of the future  
You are the judge, jury and executioner  
Allow me to pass judgement  
On the world's darkness**_

_**So I say, so let it be**_

**That's what I was going for anyway, if you can translate it better, tell me and I'll change it. I have no desire to butcher an already dead language.**

**11/04/2015 Update: This chapter has been altered slightly, expanding on some sections that I thought were lacking in detail, and could be elaborated upon, as well as some grammatical changes and corrections.**


	3. Chapter 3 - Backwards

**Here we are guys, chapter three. This one's a little longer than usual, and I'm not quite sure how it turned out.**

**A fair portion of this chapter is based directly around scenes from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I do not own the Harry Potter franchise in any way, shape or form. I wish I did though.**

* * *

**_Chapter Three – Backwards_**

Harry Potter came back into consciousness, mind active again for the first time since the botched ritual. He was almost afraid to observe what havoc he had wrought, unknowing of the fact that the universe, or at least, _his _universe, was now just an echo in the halls of time. He tried to open his eyes, to survey the damage. He couldn't.

Panicking, Harry tried to feel for his sockets, afraid that whatever he had done had irreparably damaged himself, (which in a sense, he had), only do realise that he didn't have hands with which to do so.

What the fuck.

As he grew ever more agitated, Harry's mind began to race, desperately throwing ideas, sticks into the wind, as to what had happened. He tried to move something, anything, his mind frantically sending out impulses, only for nothing to respond.

Realisation hit him like a flash of lightning.

He didn't _have_ a body.

Drawing on his occlumency to calm himself, pushing down his warring emotions, thoughts and fears, which wouldn't help him in the slightest, Harry began to analyse the situation in a manner befitting of his age, rather than the impulsive teenager he'd been acting like. He didn't have a body, and yet, somehow, was aware, and had sentience, so at the very least, his mind was intact. With the mind though, always came the soul – there was a reason why people kissed by dementors never responded to any stimuli; the removal of their soul also removed any higher order brain functions, leaving only base instincts, like breathing and osmoregulation, which were more chemical processes anyway. Harry had done extensive research into the subject at one point, seeking to enlighten himself on the true relationship of the trinity of life.

His findings were profound. Not only was the mind tied to the soul, a person's magic was as well – it seemed as if the soul, at its very core, was the essence of _being. _Muggle scientists could quite easily grow human bodies perfectly, through their ingenious methods of DNA splicing and cell replication, but they had found that any clones created lacked the _spark _of life, displaying vitals similar to that of a person in a coma, or a persistent vegetative state.

The mind, however, was slightly different. It couldn't exist without a soul, linked on an intrinsic level. However it was more susceptible to damage, and, be it deliberate, as was the case for Voldemort, or unintentional, like the Longbottoms. Voldemort had almost severed his mind from his soul by necessity – it was the nature of horcruxes that they split the soul into pieces, and if proper precautions are not taken, the mind as well. Had he not done so, the end result of his foul creations, the master soul fragment, would have been left with a mere point eight percent of his original brain capacity, which would have been quite unacceptable to the Dark Lord.

The research also served to uncover the true mechanics of the Unforgivable Curses. Harry had found that, at a base level, all three of the curses played on the relationship between the components of the trinity of life, damaging it in some way. I_mperio_, the so called 'mind control' curse in fact did nothing of the sort; instead, it weakened the links between the mind and soul, and the body of the victim, making them more susceptible to the users will. This was also why it could be fought by a strong mind, or someone more magically powerful than the caster. _Crucio_, the 'perfect torture' curse, which simulated the most excruciating pain imaginable, at every single nerve ending, all while leaving the body perfectly intact. Though this was true to some extent, in reality it damaged the links between the body and the mind, allowing the caster to insert utterly foreign, false feelings directly into the brain. Other mind magicks operated along much the same lines – love potions, compulsions, hell, even cheering charms all were similar in operation to the Unforgivable. Any of them, with extensive enough use, could cause someone to lose their mind. At the head of the trio came the most terrible of them all; _Avada Kedavra_, the 'killing curse', which in reality was worse than mere death. It completely severed the soul from the other two components, leaving it incomplete, damaged as it passed to the afterlife. The souls of people killed with the curse had to spend hundreds, if not thousands of years repairing themselves before they could be reborn into another body. A truly foul piece of magic.

Since his mind and therefore soul were intact, he concluded that his magic must be as well. If he could have, he would have smacked himself. Harry couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it earlier. He was evidently some sort of metaphysical magical entity, though what that entailed he had no idea.

Interesting.

Still, the omnipresent, infinite darkness to a mind that thrived on sensory input was more than slightly disconcerting.

To hell with it.

He reached for his magic, drawing on the vast reservoirs accumulated through years of rituals and magical experimentation, and _willed _himself to see.

And suddenly, the lights came on. Harry saw _everything_, all of time and space, every decision that had, could have, or could possibly be made, every universe to ever exist, all flooding his mind in a tsunami of information.

He couldn't comprehend it, or rather, his mind refused to. The human mind, even one as extensive as his own, simply didn't have the capability to process and respond to stimuli of this magnitude; literally everything to have ever existed. Merely attempting to assimilate it would have burned it out before you could even say 'I told you so'.

Struggling to maintain a tight grasp on his sanity, Harry _willed_ the information to abstract itself, further and further, until finally his mind allowed itself to retain it. Instead of everything, he saw a representation of it, a golden, incandescent fabric, stretching as far as the eye (or whatever its metaphysical equivalent was) could see. It was composed of hundreds of trillions of ornate threads, each one representing a universe, broken off from on another by simple decisions, changes of fate.

For one of the first times since his Hogwarts days, Harry felt humbled. Who was he, a mere mortal, to even dare thinking of toying with this, the literal fabric of reality? It put all of his life into perspective, every single one of his now seeming wholly inconsequential in comparison to _this_.

He banished the traitorous thoughts. He was not some kind of God. It was not his job to even begin to comprehend the meaning of life ("42!" something deep in his mind screamed). No, he was, for once, just Harry, just human. His only goal was to live a peaceful, happy existence – of course, if he ended up needing to change the world to do so, he would.

He saw one thread shining brighter than the others, his universe, he supposed. To his horror, however, unlike the other threads however, instead of continuing on far into the distance, this one abruptly _stopped_, like a seam ripped open from the fabric of a piece of clothing.

Horror filled him.

Gods, what had he done? Had he really ended his universe in the pursuit of his own selfish desires? The weight of countless trillions of lives crashed down on his metaphorical shoulders, knowing that he had been the cause of the loss of every single one of them.

Grief. Overwhelming, intoxicating grief washed over him.

Just as quick as it came, however, he pushed it away. The plan would go on. He would not let their sacrifices be in vain.

Locating the time period he had selected long ago for the ritual, Harry felt himself being drawn into the thread, and once again, everything was black.

* * *

_31__st__ October, 1981_

The night was wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins running aimlessly about the square, shop windows covered in paper spiders, muggle misrepresentations of a world in which they did not believe. The man glided along, a sense of purpose, power, rightness in him that he always felt on these occasions – not anger, no, that was for weaker souls than he. Triumph though…yes, he had waited a long time for this.

"Nice costume, Mister!"

The small boy's smile faltered as he caught a glimpse beneath the hood of the man's cloak, fear clouding the painted face as he turned and ran away. The man fingered the handle of his wand; one simple movement, one simple thought, and the child would never reach his mother. He decided against it. It was unnecessary, quite unnecessary. He could not afford to alert anyone to his presence.

Along a new, darker street the figure moved, his destination in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm hiding the dwelling broken, though the inhabitants did not yet know it. He made less noise than the withered leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark hedge, staring over it with cold, red eyes.

The inhabitants, his targets, hadn't drawn the curtains – the man saw them quite clearly in their quaint little bedroom, a tall, dark-haired man in glasses causing rings of multi-coloured smoke to emit from his wand, from the amusement of a small black-haired boy with brilliant green eyes. The child was giggling mindlessly, trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in his tiny fist.

The door to the room opened, and the mother entered, a tall women with long, dark red hair falling over her face, whispering words of goodnight to her son, words the figure at the gate had never heard. The father scooped up his son and placed him into the cot by the wall, smiling as he left the room.

The gate creaked a little as the hooded man pushed it open, but James Potter, on the lowest floor, did not hear it. The white wood of the man's wand whipped from beneath his cloak, sending an intense gust of wind that blew the door off its hinges.

* * *

_Minutes prior…_

The spirit of Harry Potter materialised in the top room of the house, floating above the sleeping form of his younger self. It wouldn't be long now before the next phase of his plans would be put into action.

He heard the front door slam open, blown apart by an unearthly gust of air. Invisible, he _blinked_ himself into the main hallway, to see his father pointing his wand at a hooded figure walking through the door.

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!" James cried, wordlessly transfiguring the hallway into all manner of beasts and blades, setting them all on the man that was here to kill his family.

"My, my, Missster Potter. How… rude. Do you treat all your guestss like thiss?" The hooded man said in a snakelike hiss.

"You'll never get my son, you sick bastard!" The eldest Potter conjured thick ropes of fire, banishing towards the Dark Lord with a downwards slash of his wand.

"How… dull…"

Voldemort deftly deflected the burning tendrils, transforming the flames into a pair of monstrous emerald snakes.

"§Kill him§"

The serpents lashed out with deadly precision, forcing James to jump backwards to avoid the gaping maws that crashed into the space where he had just been standing. Had it not been for the extensive drilling of the auror academy, he doubted that he would have survived. As he made to land however, his foot caught the edge of a stair, sending him spiralling head first into the bannister. Dazed, he didn't see the bolt of sickly green light headed towards him fast enough to dodge.

Harry, however, had other ideas. He wouldn't stand for losing his parents once again, not while he had the power to stop it. Just as the curse was about the impact his father, he _pulled_ the threads of magic that held it together, unravelling the spell and causing it to dissipate into nothingness. Simultaneously, he hit his father with a stasis curse of his own creation, tied to his magical signature. It locked James in place, freezing his body functions in time. It would, without extensive magical inspection, give the impression of death, and no one could undo it save for himself.

He'd had a lot of fun creating it, experimenting on captured death eaters and freezing their various organs in time, whilst the rest of the body continued to try to function. It was a painful way to die, judging by the screams.

Voldemort stepped over the prone body of the father, making his way into up the stairs. He heard a woman scream, coupled with frantic movements against the hard wood floor. If she was sensible, she, at least, would have nothing to fear. He climbed the last few steps, listening in with faint amusement at her mutterings, almost as if she was saying a prayer.

He forced the door to the bedroom, casting aside chairs and various other items of furniture in his path with a lazy wave of his hand. At the sight of him, she stopped her muttering and stepped forwards in front of her infant son, arms wide, as if it would help. Foolish, for a woman supposed to be oh so bright.

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Sstand asside, foolissh girl… you need not die today… sstand asside now…"

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead!"

"Thiss iss my lasst warning…"

"Not Harry, please, have mercy! Not him! Please, I'll do anything!"

He could have forced her away from his prize, but, after all of her whining, he was somewhat irritated. It seemed prudent to finish them all off.

A flash of green light, and Lily Marie Evans crumpled in the same manner as her husband, a marionette whose strings were cut.

The child had not cried the entire time, standing, clutching the bars of his cot as he looked up at the Dark Lord, brilliant green eyes wide with intelligence. He seemed acutely aware of what was happening, displaying an intellect beyond his year of age.

Voldemort pointed his wand very carefully into the boy's forehead; he wanted to see it happen, the destruction of the small child, the inexplicable danger. He wanted to see the light leave the eyes of his prophesised nemesis, assured in the fact that, after tonight, his victory would be absolute.

"_Avada Kedavra!_"

Runes flashed, shimmering underneath the very surface of the boy's skin, glowing in an ethereal light, Suddenly, inexplicably, the green light _bounced_, and Voldemort knew nothing but pain, dissolving into black smoke, his only desire to get away… far, far away.

Unknown to Dark Lord, a piece of black smoke separated from the whole, and latched on to the living thing, the child, rushing into the boy's forehead through the strange, lightning-bolt-shaped scar left by the supposedly unblockable curse.

However, it was not one soul that joined with the child that night. It was two. Recognising his opportunity, with the bonds tying his younger self's soul to his body weaken, Harry, like the accidental horcux moments prior, dove into the boy's brain through the scar.

Inside, a war was raging, the one year old child's essence fighting against the… foreignness that was the dark soul fragment, absolute innocence, purity, fighting absolute depravity, a thing so corrupted that it was hardly even part of a human anymore. Of course, the child had no idea of what was going on, and was lashing out instinctively against the surgical precision of the Dark Lord. It was quite obvious who the loser would be.

Harry joined the fray, combining his efforts with that of his younger self, bringing to bear the considerable might of his magic, far more than either of the other two possessed. Quickly and brutally, he _tore_ the malicious splinter apart, disassembling it, overwriting the negative aspects of its master's personality, though keeping the intelligence, ambition and innate sharp wit, cleansing it of the dark magic that permeated its master.

With a final exertion of his magic, letting the changes made snap into place, Harry's concentration faltered. He had used far too much magic this night, and reassembling the very essence of a person wasn't exactly the easiest of work, even if it was a mere fragment. The other two souls took the opportunity to break free of his bindings, and began to destabilise, for a human body cannot hold more than one soul without dire consequences, as was shown by Quirrel in Harry's first year. Since he couldn't exactly expel them without use of _Avada Kedavra_, Harry chose the only option available to him, one that he had anticipated from the very conception of his plans, though they had not worked out quite as he had expected. With the last remaining dregs of his magic, he _pulled_ them into him, letting them join with him and merge with his very essence

The result was an amalgamation of the three, the best qualities of all of them – the shrewd cunning and ambition of Lord Voldemort, the steadfast loyalty and solid morality of the older Harry, and the purity of the younger, all as one in the infant body.

The mind, however, was solely Harry's, by virtue of the fact that it simply overpowered the other two – the mind of a child and a mere fragment of the Dark Lord were no match for his overbearing mental prowess. They were crushed into nothingness the moment the three joined together, though he did elect to keep the memories, both sets of which were highly valuable to him. Voldemort's contained fifty years' worth of plans and accumulated knowledge (thought there was little amongst it that he didn't already know), including the locations of vast caches of dark artefacts, potions and ancient tomes that could be extremely useful in the future. However, it was his younger self's memories that he treasured most. Due to the highly volatile state of an infant's mind, and their rapidly developing brain functions, most of their memories of the first three years of their life tend to be deleted or overwritten. This meant that when Harry finally devoted himself to mastering occlumency, overcoming his fear of the subject caused by Snape, most of the memories of his parents were gone, much to his dismay at the time. Now though, he had full knowledge of the first year of his life, and could cherish them forever.

On the topic of occlumency, it appeared that his shields and mind structure had not made the transfer with his mind and soul. Why exactly, he didn't know. He could only hypothesise that occlumency is linked to the physical brain much like muscle memory is to the body, so, in his now infantile form, he'd have to develop both once again.

Being an old mind trapped inside a young body, Harry's next eighteen years would likely be very frustrating – there was no doubt that he would be patronised, belittled for his physical appearance, adults acting without his consent 'for his own good', never mind the fact that he was probably the most powerful mage since Merlin, the father of modern wizardry himself. It was a fair price to pay, he supposed, for the chance to change history, not to mention the fact that there were numerous rituals that could only be performed on an infant body, including the 'Blessing of Achilles', an ancient Greek ritual thought lost to the ages, which granted physical invulnerability everywhere save for one select spot on the body, which served as a centrepoint to bind the blessing in place. He'd have to get to work on that as soon as possible, before his body developed too much for it to work.

With a distinctly unchildlike sigh, Harry curled up into a ball and fell asleep. It would no doubt be a long day.

* * *

_Minutes after the fall of Lord Voldemort_...

Auror captain Sirius Black, and Albus Dumbledore, he-with-far-too-many-titles, both appeared on the corner of the street leading up to the Potter House, both separately alerted by the falling of the wards that surrounded it. Sirius was absolutely furious. Peter, no, Pettigrew must have betrayed them, his supposed 'best friends'. It wasn't even that he had been tortured and forced to give up the information under the threat of the death of his family, for he had seen Peter just the other day, whole and healthy. No, that fucking rat had sold the Potters to the Dark Bastard out of his own free will. The only thing that kept Sirius, ever the hot-head, from going straight after his former friend was the need to check if Harry, his beloved godson, was still alive. There was always the chance that Lily had somehow managed to hide or protect him, or that Voldemort had killed the two (for he was certain they were dead at this point) and left the child alone. As sick and depraved as he was, the Dark Lord did not kill magical children wantonly, even the muggleborns. It was far too removed from his magical supremacist ideology; children were precious, the only way of ensuring that magic survived and was passed on to future generations. They were too valuable to murder in cold blood. It was this hope that Sirius clung to, like a shipwreck survivor to a sole piece of flotsam.

Albus Dumbledore, snapping out of his momentary shock at seeing Sirius, who he assumed was the traitor to the Potters, walking along the main thoroughfare of Godric's Hollow, face contorted into a visage of grief and rage, summoned his wand to his wizened hand, drawing in magic in preparation of smiting the black haired man.

"SIRIUS BLACK!" The air around Dumbledore crackled with energy, his normally joyful blue eyes cold with undulated wrath, promising painful death to any who crossed his path. It was one of the rare few times that the old man had ever been truly angry, and was quite the terrifying sight. Those who could profess to have seen him in this state, most in years long past, were few and far between, for most were dead by his hand.

Sirius whirled. His eyes were wide with shock, then confusion at the sight of his former mentor and professor pointing his wand at him in a rage, before realisation struck him.

"Shit! Albus, this isn't what it looks like! Let me explain!" Dumbledore's eyes narrowed into the barest of slits.

"Speak, _boy_." Dumbledore spat the word with a vehemence. "You'd better have a very good reason to stop me from turning you to ashes where you stand."

The dog animagus quivered, making a mental to never, under any circumstances, get Dumbledore mad. He still wasn't sure if he'd leave tonight alive.

"I didn't betray Lily and James, Albus, it was Pettigrew! You know that I would have rather died than betray them!" Sirius took a deep breath. Whether Dumbledore believed what he said next would decide if he lived or died. "We told everyone that I was the secret keeper as a ruse – you know, or at least, suspected that there were spies in the Order. Why else would our operations fail so often? I was supposed to be the bait, keeping the true keeper safe from the Death Eaters. It was my idea, Albus, I killed my best friends." Sirius broke down into tears, falling to his knees on the hard tarmac, his worries and fears all bursting out in a flood of emotions.

Dumbledore lowered his wand, and his eyes softened. He'd acted rashly, placing the blame on someone who truly loved the Potters from the depths of his heart. Adding that to the Godfather Oath that Sirius had taken when Harry was born, and it was quite clear that it was impossible for him to betray his best friends.

"I am quite sorry, Sirius my boy, I acted without thinking." Dumbledore offered his hand, which Sirius took, and pulled the younger man to his feet. "Come, let us go see what became of them. There is always hope that they survived their encounter."

The two men walked up the black road strewn with red-gold leaves. It had been a beautiful autumn, until today. Approaching the Potter house, they were greeted with a scene of devastation. The door was blown off its hinges, the hallway littered with the inanimate remains of transfigured objects, the dead bodies of two gargantuan snakes lying crumpled on the floor. At the base of the stairs was the motionless body of James Potter.

Tears began streaming down Sirius' face, wailing in sorrow at the sight of the corpse of his best friend. Dumbledore gripped his shoulder.

"He's not dead, Sirius."

The Gryffindor Black looked at him in disbelief. "He isn't breathing, Albus. He has no heartbeat. How can you say he isn't dead?"

"Two things, my dear fellow. One, his body temperature hasn't lowered in the slightest, as it would have if he were deceased, and two, I cannot sense the telltale presence of the killing curse on his body. I can only suggest that he has been hit with some kind of modified stasis charm, to freeze his body as it is. Leave him there, and I can fetch someone from St. Mungo's to take him later."

The two continued up the stairs, to the main bedroom where Harry and Lily would have been. The entire back side of the room, towards the cot, which was now coated in a fine layer of ash, was in ruins. Near the door lay the prone figure of Lily, incapacitated in the same manner as her husband downstairs, red hair splayed about her fragile form. To the rear, however, lay the greatest surprise. A small child that both recognised as the youngest Potter lay curled up in a set of crumpled black robes, a white yew wand that was instantly identifiable as that of Lord Voldemort grasped in his tiny fist.

The boy's brilliant green eyes opened as they approached.

"Pa'foo'? 'A'bus?" They were both shocked at the intelligence shown by the small boy.

"Yes, child, we are here. Now we can get you someplace safe. There is no need to worry." Dumbledore said in his softest voice, picking up the tiny form.

Sirius turned away. "Albus, I have to go. I need to find the rat before he has a chance to escape. I need to… bring him to justice…" He said the last words with such malice that the temperature in the room dropped slightly.

"No Pa'foo'! No! Don' go pa'foo'! No' wurff'!" The small child exclaimed, waving his pudgy little arms frantically. By this point, Harry was getting quite irritated at the lack of vocal capabilities held by his small frame. How was he supposed to tell Sirius to stop?

The Black heir turned and left the room, leaving a wizened old man with a screaming child left standing in the desecrated house.

* * *

**As always, leave a review to tell me what you liked and what I can do better. **


	4. Chapter 4 - Introductions and Illuminae

**Sorry about the later chapter than usual guys, I had a bunch of coursework that took priority, plus this chapter underwent several revisions as I attempt to flesh out the plot for the future. I'm not quite sure how it turned out.**

**If you notice any mistakes or plotholes that have passed me by, don't hesitate to point them out so I can correct them.**

**I don't own Harry Potter in any way shape or form. If I did, I'd have fixed the travesties that were books six and seven.**

* * *

_**Chapter 4 – Introductions and Illuminae**_

Albus Dumbledore flopped down at his desk, sinking into the deep red armchair that he so adored. It had been a long week, and certainly not one that he wanted to repeat. While the rest of Wizarding Britain was celebrating, very conspicuously he might add, the downfall of the most feared dark wizard in recent history, he'd been bogged down in paperwork and legalese, a consequence of the rash actions of one Sirius Black.

That foolish boy.

Instead of staying with him to help take care of his godson, Sirius had rushed off to hunt down Pettigrew after seeing that the child was mostly unharmed. Whilst Black did have a point about preventing the rat from fleeing the country, he hadn't gone about it with a gram of fucking subtlety, leaving Dumbledore in a most precarious position. Barty Crouch, in his ever-more fanatical views on the Dark, had taken the approach of 'arrest and incarcerate first, ask questions never', sending Sirius to Azkaban prison with even so much as a trial.

He shuddered at the thought. An innocent man was currently locked up in perhaps the foulest place on Earth, held at the mercy of demonic creatures of the worst order, creatures that destroyed the very soul, preventing it from ever re-joining the Great Cycle. Whatever possessed ministers in ages long past to employ such hideous beings as guards would be forever beyond him.

What made the entire situation worse, however, was Minister Bagnold refusing to listen to his insisting that Black was innocent. 'We have to be seen doing something, Albus' were the words she said when he'd confronted her about it. It didn't matter that she was imprisoning and vilifying someone with an absolutely spotless career record, one of the best aurors and hitwizards alive today, for an act that he would never have been so crass to perform. Really, 'Potter Betrayer Massacres Many Muggles!'? Dumbledore was astounded at the sheer audacity, not to mention poor headline-creating skills, of the Daily Prophet these days. There was no mention of the fact that the 'only remaining part' of Pettigrew that they found, his finger, had not so much as a char on it, despite the horrific explosion that he had supposedly died in. Where was the logic?

So, Dumbledore was now buried under a mountain of paperwork, trying to find an avenue, any avenue, to get his former student free. It was unfortunate that he couldn't use the Godfather's oath in a court of law, the only proof Sirius taking it being him and two others who now lay comatose in St Mungo's. He also had to deal with Harry, now dubbed the 'Boy-Who-Lived' by the media, hailed as the next coming of Merlin himself by the sheep that made up the majority of the populace. He wouldn't be surprised to see a whole range of Harry Potter merchandise, books and all, by this time next year.

Unfortunately, with the infant's new-found fame came the attention of the more… unscrupulous side of their world; Death Eaters, criminals, bounty hunters, all eager to get their hands on the small boy, be it for revenge, or for the prestige and influence that would come with capturing the boy who felled the Dark Lord. It was imperative that the child of the prophecy was protected, both from these rouge elements of society and from the swollen ego that undoubtedly would accompany overexposure to his own fame. He was certain that a solution would come to mind.

Admittedly, said solution was proving more difficult to find than he had previously anticipated, mostly due to the fact that he couldn't obtain the details of the Potter wills, from which the guardian of the remarkable infant would be determined, now that the principle secondary carer was now a resident of Azkaban, despite his best efforts. James and Lily had made plans should the events of the previous month come to pass, of that he had no doubt; they were both far too smart to leave the considerable Potter holdings, the most valuable of which was their beloved son, up for contention. Whether a copy of these plans existed outside the white marble of Gringotts was another matter entirely. The damned goblins had refused to hand over details of the will, on the technicality that Lily and James were not truly dead, per say, but merely catatonic, suspended in time while the rest of the world moved around them. Instead, they had frozen the Potter accounts to 'protect the interests of their clients', when in reality they just wanted to get their grubby claws on the considerable liquid wealth stored in the vaults, through trumped-up holding charges and fees.

The whole situation was a bloody mess.

Picking a book – 'De Praesidium' – from his vast collection of ancient tomes, Albus Dumbledore began to ponder.

* * *

_Hogwarts castle, Minerva McGonnagal's quarters…_

Harry Potter, near-centennial magical genius extraordinaire had spent the first week of his new… smaller existence under the care of one Minerva McGonnagal, world renowned transfiguration mistress and teacher at Hogwarts. Once a mother figure to him (and all her other lion cubs) many years in the past, she was now acting as a mother once again, and Harry, with a maturity fitting his years, was milking it for all it was worth.

"Minny! Minny! Hawwy make pwetty kitty!" 'Accidentally' transfiguring one of his various teddies into a small, very pink kitten, which made a beeline straight towards the secret stash of catnip hidden beneath the bed, he chortled inwardly. He could only imagine how the Minerva he had once known would react to what he was doing. Fifth marauder indeed.

As for Minerva, well, she couldn't decide whether to be frustrated or awed by the lovable one year old Potter; here was a child capable of feats of accidental (part of her wondered if it wasn't) magic far beyond the capabilities of many trained adult wizards. Whilst other children might summon objects or set things on fire at the peak of their emotions, the boy was performing highly advanced inanimate to animate transfiguration on a seemingly at a whim, completely wandlessly, she might add. He was going to be an incredible wizard someday.

"Harry…" She quickly detransfigured the fuzzball raiding her precious catnip. "What have I told you about kittens in the bedroom?"

The irony was not lost on Harry.

"I sowwy Minny!" He grinned entirely unrepentantly. "Doggie?" A miniature black Irish wolfhound, reminiscent of the form of one of her favourite students, appeared in the place of an eagle feather quill, proceeding to trash the desk.

As she watch the small dog make her bedroom look like a rubbish tip, a lone tear trickled down her face at the reminder of Sirius Black, incarcerated in Azkaban due to the corrupt mess that was the Ministry. It was a small consolation that Barty Crouch, the man responsible, was no longer in office, brought down by the reveal of his son as the 'Butcher of the Dark Lord', an infamous Death Eater known for the manner that he preferred to kill his victims: household charms used for preparing meat. His... prey were always returned, gutted, stripped of skin and organs fed to carrion eaters. Even You-Know-Who himself hadn't been that far gone.

"I sowwy Minnie, Hawwy silly" This time entirely sincere, and highly ashamed at his lack of tact, Harry crawled up to her and wrapped his pudgy little arms around her ankle, radiating love and caring as only an infant could.

"C'mere you little rapscallion, it's alright, you couldn't have known." Harry grimaced once again at his actions as she scooped him up into her arms. "Now, what are we going to do with you?" He giggled incessantly as she tickled his rather sensitive tummy. "Headmaster Dumbledore is currently trying to find people to look after you, while Mummy and Daddy are sleeping. We'll find you a home soon enough."

"Stay wi' Minnie?" he inquired, knowing that it would likely be expected of him to ask, even though his plans would be hindered on the off chance that she should accept.

"Oh no Harry, I can't look after you forever, I have pupils to teach, detentions to give. I'm already behind on marking because of you and your wicked ways." She tickled him again, evoking another round of giggles.

In all honesty, Harry was wondering what was taking Dumbledore so long; there was no way that a wizard of the man's calibre would be having this much trouble finding a way to protect him. The only thing that he could think of was that Albus had been buried in all the legal bullshit that came with the Wizengamot, stopping him from either researching or constructing the necessary blood wards that would keep him safe from outside influences. As much as he loved staying with Minerva, there was a lot he had to do, and not much time to do it, all of it revolving around him being placed in isolation at the Dursley's. Some of his rituals had to be performed before he reached the age of two, or his body would be too developed to properly accept them, and with the amount of time that ordering reagents and setting the ritual arrays up, he would be lucky to complete them at all if he wasn't moved soon.

The most important of the three urgent rituals was the so-called 'Blessing of Achilles' – named after the Greek warmage who, according to legend, was immersed in the waters of the River Styx by his mother Thestis, a sea nymph, one of the thirteen Seelie princesses, granting him physical invulnerability everywhere save for his ankle, from which he was held when he was submerged in the river of the afterlife. He went on to do many great things, and it was honestly hard to separate the facts from the myth, but all stories agreed with the fact that he was finally brought down by chance, a poisoned arrow striking his later named 'Achilles tendon'. The fables did, however, describe the ritual rather well – the waters of the Styx were the key ingredient, amongst other, easier to obtain components. Unluckily for Harry, one did not simply go down to the underworld and fetch a bucket of refreshing soul water these days, for the seven gates had been sealed long ago. No, from the texts that he had read on the subject, one had to barter with Death himself to obtain it, a task that he was not looking forward to, given the fates of his ancestors, the Peverell brothers.

'Gaze of Ma'at' was the second of the three, though it was referred to as the Feather in Egyptian mythology. The ritual granted extreme visual and mental clarity, and the ability to see the makeup of a person's soul. Unicorns were born with the ability naturally, hence how they gravitate towards beings that are pure of heart, and shun those who are not. Woe betide anyone that dared harm a unicorn. It was perhaps the most difficult of the trio, both in setup and execution, requiring the willingly given essences of several rare and powerful magical creatures. He wasn't quite sure how he was going to get access to them, let alone convince them to donate part of their being to further his own goals. A problem to be solved at a later date.

The final one was the simplest: 'Potencia multiplica', the only power ritual that he dared attempt given the young age and volatility of his new body. The name was a misnomer, for it didn't actually multiply ones power, instead merely widening the natural magical pathways present in the body, allowing an individual to draw on and use more of their stored power at any one time. Wizards in the past had made the mistake of believing the name, thinking themselves invincible, yet exhausting themselves after using a single spell. This wouldn't be a problem for Harry, with his naturally immense magical reserves, added to which were the power of his future body, and the soul fragment of Voldemort's that he had consumed. It was his hope that by widening his channels at a young age, he would boost the natural development of his soul/body links, allowing him to become more in tune with his magic. After all, what was the point of having gargantuan quantities of magic if you couldn't use it to its full potential?

He could only hope that the situation resolved itself soon, so the next stage of his plans could begin in earnest.

* * *

Far to the south, a tall man clad in black robes strode through the black stone corridors of his workplace. It wasn't grand, by any stretch of the imagination – no, that was for the politicians and the simpering nobility that thought they controlled them. The correct word would be _functional_, everything having a purpose, with no waste frivolities. It was here that the mysteries of magic were uncovered, the place that, due to the meddling and general incompetence of the Wizengamot, was perhaps the last bastion of magical excellence in the country.

To an outsider, the place was a maze, a twisting web of false corridors and dangerous ward traps. It would be no small miracle if anyone that attempted to break in left at all, let alone leaving _alive_. There were far too many secrets, too much power in this one building, so much so that should the government ever find out the true extent of their work, they would most certainly shut them down, or at least _try _to. Not that that would ever happen.

They were called Unspeakables for a reason.

The man, Algerion Croaker, as he was known today, was the head of the organisation commonly identified as the 'Department of Mysteries', though their true name was far less mundane: 'Illuminae', the Enlightened. They had branches all over the world, though their base was here in Britain, the birthplace of modern wizardry, despite its recent fall in standards.

Reaching his destination, Croaker splayed his hand upon a black plinth, letting the runes examine his identity, his magical signature and the presence of any compulsions or mind alteration. Humming in acceptance, the dark stone door melted into the floor, revealing large room, at the centre of which was a mahogany table, surrounded by figures robed similarly to himself, with only minor differentiation to signify rank.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen," Croaker took his seat, a plain black throne at the head of the table. "I do hope you are all well." There were murmurs of agreement, before the room settled once again. "Now, to business. Roberts, you alerted me to urgent news, leading me to call this gathering together. Explain, if you please."

A slim, waiflike woman with wispy blond hair stood up. "Sir, we have a major lead on the events of October 31st that you asked us to investigate, tied into the enormous energy pulse that we detected at around ten o'clock that night."

"Oh?" Croaker raised a single eyebrow, distorting his lined features. "Explain."

Roberts summoned a mound of files from a desk to the side of the room, spreading them out on the table for all to see. Mathematical calculations and graphs dominated the paperwork, causing a rush of whispering as the surrounding Unspeakables deciphered the findings.

"We traced the origin of the pulse by triangulating readings from all across the country. The Doppler Effect observed allowed us to pinpoint the exact location. I'll give you three guesses to where we found it to come from, and the first two don't count."

Mutterings of "Potter" and "Godric's Hollow" filled the room, the news of the child's survival having spread like fiendfyre cast on a dry summer's afternoon.

"Is that so?" Croaker hummed, contemplating the news. "Could it be possible that it was an aftereffect of the reflected killing curse and subsequent felling of the Dark Lord?"

"With all due respect sir, the killing curse is a single instance spell, only affecting one individual, even if that individual were the Dark Lord, though it does open up a whole new enquiry as to the lack of a body. According to all known magical theory, the only types of magic that could possibly produce energy readings of this magnitude are powerful geomagics, spacial distortion rituals and class V holy magicks. In any case, it's a moot point, for as far as we can tell, the pulse occurred _before_ Voldemort even entered the grounds, let alone cast a curse."

"So what are we looking at then?" A voice from the other side of the table inquired.

"The most likely hypothesis that we have at this point is some sort of extra-dimensional traveler, or possibly divine intervention; the fabric of space around the cottage is weaker than the surrounding area, and no detectable gravitational fluctuations occurred with the pulse, and high levels of Cherenkov radiation are present within the cottage itself, indicating some sort of faster-that-light travel. There are also traces of extremely dark magic lingering in the environment, mainly around the areas where James and Lily Potter were found. We suspect them to have once constituted killing curses, though we are at a loss as to how or why they dissipated instead of killing the pair."

The Head Unspeakable drummed his fingers on the table, a tic that occurred whenever he was nervous or curious. "Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. It seems as though there may be much more to the events of Samhain than anyone has come to realize, even the old meddler, Dumbledore. What of the Potter boy? Have you investigated him yet? Our erstwhile visitor may have contacted or interacted with him in some way."

"No sir, it never occurred to myself and my team. In any case, the infant has been taken in by Dumbledore, so any further investigation may be difficult."

"Roberts, I want that child. You are hereby tasked with retrieving him, by force if necessary. There are tests we simply must perform on him. If it is as I fear, and the bindings on the Old Gods are loosening…"

"The world will be changed, forever."

* * *

**As always, leave a review to tell me what I did well, and what I could improve on. If you're feeling particularly generous, maybe even put a smiley face at the end? It always warms an author's heart to see constructive feedback.**


	5. Chapter 5 - The Dursleys

**This chapter is essentially a means of setting the scene for upcoming events, and contains a fair amount of foreshadowing for the future of the story. If you can identify or guess what I'm hinting at (and it's quite subtle), I'll be very impressed. A significant amount of verbatim is taken from 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone', Chapter 1 - 'The Boy-Who-Lived'.**

**I don't own Harry Potter or anything associated with it in any way, shape or form. If I did, I'd probably be swimming in bathtubs of cash (wouldn't you, if you were as rich as J. ? :£), not a penniless Year 11 student living in Hackney.**

* * *

_**Chapter 5 - Dursleys**_

Vernon and Petunia Dursley, of house number four, Privet Drive, prided themselves in the fact that they were entirely normal, rational people. If there was anything mysterious or strange going on, you could say with certainty that they would not be involved, for they simply did not hold with nonsense or wacky goings-on. Mr Dursley was a Head of Department at a manufacturing firm called Grunnings, overseeing the drill-making division, and was an extremely large man with a distinct lack of neck and far too many chins, his moustache obviously compensating for _something_. His missing neck appeared to manifest itself in his wife, a thin blonde that could have been beautiful, save for the her evident lack of a fashion sense (she was entirely too fond of flower patterned dresses and pale pink) and the fact that all of her features, whilst individually good-looking, were entirely out of proportion to one another, her neck being almost twice as long as the average persons.

The pair had a son called Dudley, who, in their opinion, was the finest child that you could find anywhere, a wonderful boy who could do no wrong. Of course, if you asked around the neighbourhood, many people would be of the opinion that he was an absolute terror, a bully, a troublemaker of the highest order, pushing around the others at his nursery to get his own way, not that they would ever say these directly to the family, for the boy's antics were most definitely inherited. These whisperings and rumours were always dismissed by the Dursleys, for their precious Dudders was the perfect child, and would never resort to something as awful as bullying.

The Dursleys, however, had a terrible secret, and their greatest fear was for it to be discovered (though the discoverers in question would be promptly obliviated, but they didn't know that). Mrs Dursley had a sister, by name of Lily Potter, nee Evans, who, along with her husband and child, were quite possibly the most unDursleyish people that one could ever meet. Lily had married far above her station, a lord in fact, to a rather attractive rouge (Petunia would never admit to it) by the name of James Potter, scion of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter, something, along with all the rest, that Petunia was entirely jealous of.

This however, was not the secret.

The secret was magic. Not your regular charlatans, mind you, with smokes and mirrors and all the like. No, James and Lily Potter were true magicians, though they would never deem to be called as such, able to perform impossible feats that defied all known natural laws. Petunia still remembered to this day the old woman that had visited their house, confirming all the old stories that they had heard from their grandparents about their great-grandfather, to tell Lily that she was magic, and would be attending a magic school, by the name of Hogwarts. She had been so jealous at the time, and had begged, and begged, and begged to attend, even writing a letter to the blasted headmaster. It hadn't worked, and Petunia was now stuck in a life of normality, far, far away from the exciting existence that her beautiful sister lived in.

She would never admit to these feelings, however.

The Dursleys, as a collective, shuddered to think what the neighbours would think if the Potters quite literally _appeared_ on the street. They were quite hopeful that it would never happen, for the Potters also had a son, around Dudley's age, and they did not want their precious Dudders to mix be corrupted by… _it_.

Over the past week, however, _strange _things had been happening: owls flying in broad daylight in flocks of hundreds, shooting stars, enormous bonfires even after November 5th. Nothing to do with them, they decided. It was for the best that they just carry on as normal, and ignore all the things that didn't fit into their idea of how the world should work.

At half past eight in the morning, Vernon Dursley picked up his briefcase and set off for work, pecking Petunia on the cheek as he walked out the door, all while quietly chuckling to himself at the antics of his Dudders, who was now having a tantrum and throwing his considerable portions of breakfast against the walls.

"Little tyke," he chortled, stepping into the car.

As he pulled round the corner of the cul-de-sac, he noticed his first strange happening – a small brown tabby cat reading a map. Vernon blinked in surprise, the distraction almost enough to send him careening into a neighbour's car. He turned to look again, and yes, there was indeed a small cat looking at the sign that said 'Privet Drive', before it turned its head and stared intently at him. Vernon mentally slapped himself; cats couldn't read maps, or signs, or recognise people. It must have been a trick of the light.

Continuing on his journey, he set his mind upon the large shipment of drill bits that he was going to negotiate today, and only that. Nothing abnormal, or strange.

By the time he reached the edge of town where his office was located, however, drill bits were driven out of his mind by something else. Sitting in the usual morning rush hour traffic, he couldn't help but notice groups of strangely dressed people gathering by the side of the road, clad in robes of the most garish of colours. Young people these days! He supposed that this was some sort of new trend, before noticing the fact that several of them weren't young at all – a thin man, appearing far older than he, was amongst them, draped in a flowing emerald cloak. The nerve of them all!

It must be a cult of some kind, or a protest against some of the downright silly policies that Prime Minister Thatcher had implemented recently. Yes, that was it. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

Vernon continued on his way, the traffic finally abating, with his mind solely focused on drills once again, arriving at his workplace at precisely nine o'clock, as he always did. It was lucky for Vernon that, sitting in his office on the ninth floor, his chair faced away from the window, so as not to be blinded on the rare occasion that the sun decided to show itself in the British Isles. If he hadn't, he would have noticed owl after owl swoop by his window, and, to be quite frank, he could not have coped with much more strangeness in a single day.

All in all, Vernon was having a very good morning; he'd finished haggling on a price for the shipment of drill bits, shouted at a few incompetent workers, made some important phone calls and shouted a bit more (some thought that he got his jollies from doing so, with how often he did it).

His good mood, however, was promptly spoiled at lunch-time.

Walking across the road to buy himself a bun from the nearby bakery, he passed by a collection of cloaked figures, which he had forgotten about in the midst of the morning's work.

"You have heard about the Potters, right?"

Vernon stopped dead in his tracks, fear gripping him in an iron vice. Was this in any way related to those good-for-nothing relatives of his wife, the… _freaks_?

"Yes, yes, who hasn't by this point? You-Know-Who defeated at last! It is such a shame though, both parents in a coma, and their son Harry…"

Vernon heard no more as he dashed across the road back towards his workplace, as fast as his round frame would allow him. Flipping the sign on the door of his office to 'Do Not Disturb', he took a seat at his desk and picked up the phone, preparing to call Petunia. After a moment's hesitation, however, he put the receiver back down. He was being stupid. Potter wasn't such an unusual name after all; in fact, he was sure that there were plenty of people with the surname Potter, who had a son called Harry. The chance that it was _their_ Potters was astronomically low. Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure if their son was called Harry – he'd never met the family, let alone seen the boy. It could have been Harvey, or Jake, or any other common name that parents seemed to love these days. At least Dudley was uncommon, a refined name for a boy that would succeed him in the future.

No, there was no need to tell Petunia; she always did get upset at any mention of her sister, not that he blamed her in the slightest. If he'd had a sister like that…

Nevertheless, he found it much harder to concentrate on his work that afternoon, so much so in fact that when he left the building at five o'clock, he was distracted enough to walk straight into someone just outside the door.

"Sorry," he grunted, not truly sorry at all, for it was not in his nature to apologise to people he viewed as lesser, which the odd, violet-cloaked man currently on the ground most certainly was. Still, appearances had to be kept up, lest the neighbours think badly of him.

Strangely enough, the wrinkled old man didn't seem upset in the slightest. On the contrary, his face was twisted into a wide smile.

"Don't be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me at the moment! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating this happy, happy time!"

The old man hugged Vernon (or at least tried to, his short arms barely reaching a third of the way around the larger man's impressive girth), and ran off.

Vernon stood still, rooted in place by the shock of what he had just experienced – hugged by a complete stranger, called a Muggle (which sounded strangely insulting, even if he didn't know what it meant), and once again, hearing mentions of this You-Know-Who, who, ironically, he didn't know anything about. He was well and truly rattled.

Vernon hurried to his car and set off for home, hoping against all hopes that this day would not get any weirder, for there was only so much oddity that a perfectly _normal_ man like himself could handle.

Of course, when the fates hear wishes like that, they tend to do the exact opposite. Vernon had no idea of what awaited him that night.

As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing that he saw (which didn't improve his mood in the slightest), was the same tabby cat that he'd seen that morning, sitting on his garden wall..

"Shoo!" Vernon waved his hands frantically, trying to scare the feline away.

The cat didn't move.

Instead, it gave him a stern look, almost like a teacher would give to a naughty student. This most definitely was not normal cat behaviour.

Pulling himself together, he let himself into the house, pushing the oddities of the day from his mind so as to not mention anything undue to his wife. He was greeted to the sound of his son's tantrums, the boy having learned a new word that day ("Shan't!"), and the smell of Petunia's wonderful cooking. Collecting himself and banishing any rebellious, _strange_ thoughts, he walked into the living room, giving his wife a kiss as he passed, and turned on the TV to watch the six o'clock news, before flopping down onto the leather sofa that lined the far end of the room.

"…And for the last of tonight's headlines, bird-watchers everywhere are reporting that the nation's owl population are continuing the trend of acting unusually, as they have been for the past week." Vernon wondered why this had made the news headlines. "For those who don't know, owls are nocturnal creatures, hardly ever seen in daylight. For the past week however, there have been hundreds of sightings of these magnificent birds flying in every direction, in broad daylight. Experts have been unable to ascertain the reason for the sudden shift in behavioural patterns. That's it for tonight's headlines, we now pass you over to Jim McGuffin for the latest on the weather."

"Thank you, Ted." the weatherman intoned, "It's not only the owls that have been acting oddly this week. Viewers from as far apart as Cornwall and the Shetland Isles have been phoning in to report that, instead of the rain promised yesterday, they've had downpours of shooting stars lighting up the sky, as has been occurring all week. Bonfire Night ended four days ago, folks! I can, however, promise a wet night for much of southern Britain, with patches of fog covering much of Kent and…"

Vernon thumbed the off switch on the remote control, his body frozen in place. He couldn't bear to hear any more. Owls flying in daylight? Mysterious figures in cloaks all over the place? And worst of all, whispers, oh-so-strange whispers about the _Potters_.

Petunia came in from the kitchen, bearing a tray laden with tea and biscuits. It was no good. He'd have to broach the subject with her.

"Err... Petunia, dearest." He cleared his throat nervously. "I don't suppose you've heard from your… sister, lately?" He braced himself, for they normally pretended that she had no sister, never wanting to broach the topic of _strangeness._

"No," she hissed in a tone that some in the Wizarding world would have equated to parseltongue. "Why?"

"Funny stuff on the news," Vernon mumbled, not really wanting to be on the receiving end of his wife's wrath. "Owls… shooting stars… and there were a lot of funny-looking people in town today…"

"So?" She snapped, truly in a foul mood at this point.

"Well, I just thought…maybe…it was something to do with… you know… her crowd."

Petunia sipped her tea through pursed lips, a conflicted expression on her face. There was no doubt that _something_ was happening in the Wizarding world, for there to be visible signs to the muggle populace. You see, as much as Petunia harped on to Vernon and the neighbours about how normal she was, in reality she was far from it. That's right, Petunia Dursley was a _squib_, a magic user with an inherited genetic disease that prevented them from using external magic, the endings to her magical pathways closed. However, she still had a fully functioning magical core, and, had she been so inclined, could have definitely learned to perform magicks such as occlumency and even the animagus transformation. Her mother had had the very same disease.

At the age of eleven, after her beloved sister Lily had received her Hogwarts, she was struck with a fit of jealousy, causing her to resent the Wizarding world and all that belonged to it, which included her sister, to her young mind. She had since grown out of that phase, jealous instead replaced by fear, a fear that she would be completely unable to relate to her sister anymore, and that she wouldn't be forgiven after all those nasty, spiteful comments that she had made as a teenager. In her defence, having been told fantastic stories about the magical world from her grandfather, mainly about the adventures and exploits of her great-grandfather, and then discovering that her little sister would be able to join it in earnest, and she wouldn't, well, who wouldn't a little jealous, at the very least?

While these treacherous, abnormal memories were running through his wife's head, Vernon, worried about her possible reaction, wondered if he dared tell her about the whisperings of the name "Potter". Deciding against it, he instead said, as casually as he could, "Their son… he'd be around Dudley's age by now, wouldn't he?"

"I suppose so," Petunia replied, eyes close to watering as she remembered the invitation that she had received to go to the boy's 'christening' (though Christianity didn't really exist in the magical world – it was the closest descriptor for the event), with a note attached from Lily, asking for the opportunity for reconciliation. She'd been too petrified to respond, afraid of what would be said, and had ignored the letter.

"What was his name again? Howard, was it?"

"Harry." She corrected, staring blankly into the distance, as though she were not truly present in the conversation.

"Oh yes, that was it." Vernon took his wife's non-attentiveness as a sign of her disapproval. "Nasty, common name in my opinion. Nothing like our Dudley."

Petunia said nothing in response.

After a period of tense silence, which was somehow louder than their conversation, the two decided, in an unspoken agreement to head upstairs to bed. As they both lay on their respective sides of the mattress, with Petunia sound asleep, having nightmares about what her sister would say, Vernon lay awake, turning the day's events over in his mind. Was he imagining things? Could this have anything to do with _their_ Potters? If it did, and if it got out that they were related to a pair of freaks… well, some things are better left unsaid, lest they come to be.

His last thoughts before he finally fell into an uneasy sleep was that, no matter what happened with the Potters, it couldn't affect him, a perfectly normal, rational person. He had nothing to fear.

How wrong he was.

* * *

With a small _pop_, a man appeared on the corner of Privet Drive, the very same corner that Vernon had seen the eerie tabby cat earlier on in the day.

It was for the best that most of the people in the neighbourhood were asleep at this late hour, for nothing like this man had ever been seen before on Privet Drive, or in all of Surrey, for that matter. He was old, no, old didn't quite cut it – ancient would be a better word, having recently celebrated his one hundredth and twenty fifth birthday with his dear friend Daedalus Diggle, who was born on the same day. He was extremely tall and thin, wearing a visage only associated with the wise, and had bright blue eyes, with a perpetual twinkle that was either endearing or infuriating, depending on who you asked. This strange, strange old man went by the name of Albus Dumbledore.

Albus didn't seem to realise that he had just arrived on a street where everything from his name to his worn leather boots were unwelcome. No, he was too busy rummaging in his cloak, no doubt looking for one of his many odds and ends that he kept with him at all times, collected in the adventures of his younger years, or invented himself. He did, however, realise he was being watched. He pulled something out of his robes, a small silver object that looked somewhat like a cigarette lighter – a deluminator, an object of his own creation. Looking around, just in case there happened to be any muggles wandering past at this late hour, he flicked the catch of the deluminator, and clicked the small switch inside. The nearest streetlight extinguished with a small pop, a globe of light drawn into the light. Another click – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the deluminator, until the only lights on the cul-de-sac that was Privet Drive were two small pinpricks by the tree, a pair cat-like eyes next to a shadowed tree. If anyone looked out of the window now, even the beady-eyed Petunia Dursley, they wouldn't be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement.

"Fancy seeing you here, Minerva." Albus' eyes twinkled with an amused light.

A woman, not quite as old as Dumbledore himself, but definitely getting on in her years, stepped out from the shadows of a nearby tree, holding a small, sleeping infant swaddled in white cloth. Had Vernon been present, he would have remarked that the woman had the same eyes as the tabby cat that he had seen earlier (though in the same breath, he would have berated himself for even pointing out the resemblance, for cats could not become people, could they?).

"I could say the same to you, Albus," McGonagall smiled, the veneer of 'strict-Scottish-professor-that'll-eat-you-if-you-step-a-toe-out-of-line' slipping in the presence of her old friend. "You haven't been out of your office all week."

"Well, you know how it is. Having three jobs do take their toll on a person, even one seen in such an illustrious light as myself. I've sometimes considered retiring from politics, to attend fully to the children at Hogwarts, but-"

"Let me guess, the Purebloods?"

"Indeed. I can't allow the Dark families any more opportunities to gain power, especially after their de facto leader, Lord Malfoy, has just been acquitted of all charges." Albus scowled in distaste at the blatant bribery and corruption that he had to deal with on a regular basis. "What are you doing here so early, my dear? You weren't set to arrive for at least another five minutes, and heaven knows you're a stickler for punctuality."

"I've been here all day, Albus, observing Harry's new… _family_…" She said the word as if it were one of Albus' famed lemon drops, extremely sour and distasteful (how he enjoyed them, she would never know).

"All day? When you could have been celebrating at one of the dozens of feasts and parties that I saw on my way here? My dear Minerva, you take life too seriously"

"Oh yes, everyone's celebrating all right." A look of annoyance crossed her face. "You'd think they'd be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something's going on. It was on _their_ news, headlines and all." She jerked her head back towards the Dursley residence. "I heard it. Flocks of owls, shooting stars… well, they're not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something, especially with those shooting stars in Kent. I'll bet that it was Diggle again; he never was one for secrecy."

"You can't blame them," Dumbledore said gently. "We've had precious little to celebrate for the past eleven years."

"I know that," McGonagall replied, in a most irritated manner. "But that's no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumors like old women." She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore, who chuckled at the insinuation, and the irony. "It would be just our luck if right after the downfall of the worst Dark Lord in recent history, the secret was finally exposed. He is truly gone, Albus?"

Dumbledore sighed, his eyes losing their twinkle. "I'm afraid, Minerva, that that might not be the case. I suspect that he isn't gone, but merely banished, from the lack of a body, and the strange magicks that I observed in the house. People are too caught up in their celebrations to accept the views and speculations of an old codger like myself. For the time being, though, he is gone, and will be too weak to return for quite some time. Would you care for a lemon drop?"

"No Albus." Minerva shivered at the thought. "I tried one once, and never again. How you can bear them, I cannot comprehend."

Dumbledore chuckled, the twinkle returning in full. "Well, let us get down to business." The pair walked down the pavement, stopping right outside number four, Privet Drive, the new home for the young man in McGonagall's arms.

"Are you sure we have to leave him here, Albus?"

"Why ever not, Minerva? Is there something that you'd like to share?"

"Albus, I've been watching them all day. You couldn't find two people who are less like us; Vernon is a fat brute who has no qualms about bullying and intimidating his way through life, and Petunia… well, I can't believe that she's related to Lily – they couldn't be more different! And their son!" She paused to take a breath, and calm herself from her rant, which was quickly crescendoing. "I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets! You can't have Harry Potter live here!"

"It's for the best, Minerva, at least until Lily and James can be awoken from their comas. We'll explain everything to his aunt and uncle when we wake them up."

"Really, Albus?" McGonagall sighed, sitting down on the low wall that marked the edge of number four's garden. "You expect them to listen to us? They'll never understand him! He'll be famous, a legend – I wouldn't be surprised if, instead of Halloween or Samhain, the thirty first was known as Harry Potter day in the future. Everyone in our world will know his name!"

"Exactly," Dumbledore intoned, looking very seriously over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "It would be enough to turn any man's head, let alone a child. Imagine it, famous for something he won't even remember, celebrated for something that happened before he could even walk and talk!" Minerva scowled, waiting for him to correct himself. "A turn of phrase, my dear. I will admit, he is rather intelligent, especially for one his age. You said something about 'controlled' accidental magic?"

"Yes, Albus," It was clear that McGonagall was still not happy with the whole situation. "I saw him doing all manner of magicks: transfiguration, charms, animation, and he seemingly understood what he was doing. He'll never fit in here – they'll ostracise him at the first sign of _abnormality_." She spat the word with a vehemence.

"Still, can you see my reasons for leaving him here, away from all of the pandering sycophants and the manipulators of our world? It's for the best, him growing up without all of that in his life, at least until he's ready to take it."

McGonagall opened her mouth, then changed her mind, and sighed. "Yes, I suppose you have a point. It still doesn't sit right with me, though. Let's get on with it, then."

Albus pressed the doorbell to the side of the door, which sounded with a loud _ring_.

* * *

Vernon woke up from his fitful sleep to the sound of the doorbell ringing, at two o'clock in the morning on November the ninth. He blinked his eyes blearily.

"Who the fuck rings a doorbell at this hour?" he grumbled to himself, dragging himself from the comforts of his bed, and putting on his brown dressing gown. "Probably some idiotic kids playing a bloody prank…"

What he found when he opened the door, however, was not an unruly teenager in the slightest. In fact, it was as far removed from that as possible; two figures, a man and a woman, both old and dressed in long, flowing robes, with grey hair in abundance.

"Hello, Mr Dursley," said the old man with the beard of monstrous proportions. Who did he think he was, Gandalf the Grey? "I think you should go and wake your wife, we have much to discuss."

"Now listen here, you old fool! You can't come knocking in the middle of the night and expect people to let you into their houses! Who the hell do you think you are, ringing the doorbell at this hour?"

"Let me start again, Mr Dursley. I am Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and my companion is Minerva McGonagall, Transfiguration Mistress of Hogwarts. We're here to discuss matters relating to your nephew, and the sister of your wife."

Vernon's face turned as pale as a sheet, having realized that, yes, the strange people in robes had been talking about _their_ Potters, not to mention the strange people at his doorstep. It was only then that he noticed the small child fast asleep in the woman's arms, a boy of no older than one year old, with smatterings of black hair, and a lightning bolt shaped scar on his tiny forehead. With a muted gesture, he invited them inside and shuffled his way upstairs to wake Petunia, too afraid of being turned into a frog (or something to that effect) to argue.

"Pet!" He shook his wife in a hurried manner. "Pet, wake up!"

"Huh… Vernonwahyoudoin'? Istwoo'clock…"

"Petunia, wake up! It's _them_… _they've_ come. You need to wake up now! _They_ want to talk!"

Petunia's eyes shot open, suddenly wide awake, filled with fear and apprehension. "What?!" she hissed, not truly believing him. "You can't be serious!"

"Deadly, Petunia." He clasped her hand, trying to draw some measure of comfort from the small action. "They said they wanted to talk about your… sister," Petunia flinched. "And her son. Now quick, get a dressing gown on so we can get downstairs."

Petunia rose from the bed, wrapping herself in a pastel pink, fluffy robe, and made her way down into the kitchen, where their erstwhile visitors were sitting on a pair of oak chairs, looking as out of place in the house as a pair of lions in a child's playground.

"Take a seat, Mrs Dursley. I'm sure you'll want to hear what we have to say." The man (Dumbledore, was it?) motioned for his companion, who was still clutching the child, to speak.

McGonagall took a deep breath, and began the story.

"For the past eleven years, our world, the Wizarding world, has been wrapped up in a war, against a Dark Lord and his followers, people that have no qualms with killing and torturing people, man, woman or child. This Dark Lord, who went by the name of…" She paused, collecting herself. "Vv… Vol… Voldemort. Please don't make me say that again, Albus. Anyway, yes, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was a user of magicks so foul and evil that they stain the very soul, and was slowly, despite our best efforts, winning the war against a population who were quite frankly tired of fighting, of dying. So imagine our surprise and jubilation when, a week ago, the most powerful Dark Lord in recent history was felled, by a woman and her child, a woman, Petunia, that I'm sure you know… knew… well." She gestured to the small child that she was holding. "This is that child, your nephew, Harry Potter."

Dumbledore picked up where McGonagall left off. "Lily invoked a powerful and obscure protection magic that caused the killing curse, which is instant death should you be hit by it, to rebound when it was fired at her son, the boy in front of you, obliterating the caster. Unfortunately, in the same incident that saw the fall of You-Know-Who, the boy's parents were put into a coma, and current reside in St. Mungo's, where we are trying to find a way to cure them."

Petunia swallowed her fears, bringing herself to ask the one question that was on both her and Vernon's minds:

"How does this relate to us?"

"If I may, Minerva?" The transfiguration professor acquiesced, handing over the sleeping child to the headmaster, who set him down gently on the table. Beckoning to Petunia to look, he began tracing the faded runes on the boy's skin, remnants of Lily's protection ritual. "These runes are what remains of the powerful ritual of protection that Lily invoked, and they still have power lingering within them. Now, although the leader of the terrorists that we call Death Eaters is banished, his followers remain, all looking for revenge on the 'Boy-Who-Lived', for killing their master. With your permission, as the only living blood relative, I can tie the remaining power of the ritual into blood wards, which I will place around your house should you agree. Not only will these wards serve to shield the boy, and your family, from the more unscrupulous elements of our society, they will also keep regular wizards from noticing your dwelling, saving you from having to deal with more… freaks, I believe you call us? Please keep in mind that, should you decline, it is likely that the Death Eaters will seek you out anyway, as relatives of the Potter family, and may seek to claim your lives in retribution." Both Petunia and Vernon's faces turned ashen at the thought of their precious Dudley being slaughtered by _freaks_.

McGonagall chimed in. "It wouldn't be a permanent arrangement, just until we can find a way to awaken his parents from their comas."

"Indeed." Dumbledore, pulled out a golden watch, with twelve hands and no numbers, which made little sense to anyone else in the room. "Now, we cannot dally. We have no time to waste. Do you accept, or will we have to let fate run its course?"

The Dursleys turned to look at one another, thoughts running through their heads at breakneck speeds. They were damned if they did, but even more damned if they didn't, and, though they would never love the boy as their own, Dudley's protection was their utmost priority. It wouldn't do to have _freaks_ come after them, with no protection. As the saying went:

'_When in Rome, do as the Romans do' - __Lorenzo Ganganelli, Pope Clement XIV_

Petunia gave a sharp nod, indicating her agreement.

* * *

After Dumbledore and McGonagall had left, their business concluded, and the Dursleys finally asleep once more, the small boy lain on the sofa in the living room of number four, Privet Drive opened his eyes, and smiled.

It had begun.

* * *

**As always, be sure to review if you enjoyed the chapter, or if you have anything to suggest or comment on. Reviews are the lifeblood of an author (and the smileys at the end are nice too)!**

**Next chapter should be a week from today, barring any unforeseen circumstances. **


	6. Chapter 6 - To Deal with Death

**As always, I don't own Harry Potter in the slightest. If I did, well, you wouldn't be reading this here, but instead in book form, for that second Harry Potter series that I would totally write if I were J. . (a guy can dream ;-;).**

**Sorry about the wait guys, the end of this chapter simply did not want to be put into writing. Still not quite happy about the whole death scene, but what can you do. We're finally into the big leagues - more people (creatures? beings? immortal things that cannot be comprehended?) have taken an interest in Harry due to his actions than he would have liked, and we begin to see some of the repercussions of what happens.**

**As a result of the delay, however, I have gotten most of the next chapter written, so we should be on schedule this week :D**

* * *

**Chapter Six – To Deal with Death**

Harry had spent the past six months of his infant life at number four, Privet Drive, now able to both walk and talk with some degree of competence, though his voice still had the irritating lisp that all toddlers are known for. Nothing remarkable had occurred thus far; like before, he had been placed in the cupboard under the stairs by Vernon, the intolerant bastard wanting him out of sight, and out of mind. He and Dudley, who attempted to emulate his father in every way possible, in actions and appearance (for he was already beginning to resemble an infant sperm whale), both treated him like shit, making demeaning remarks and barbed comments whenever they saw him. Once upon a time, these comments, and the physical abuse that would later accompany them, would have affected him, leading him to become wary of physical contact, and a rather closed person, even to his closest friends. Indeed, the small black haired child that came to Hogwarts was a meek, timid boy that latched onto the first sign on kindness that he encountered, far removed from the Wizarding world's expectations of a confident, self assured and most of all, powerful boy wonder, having lapped up the lies of the '_Harry Potter Adventures_' book series like cats to milk. Now, though, the demons of his early years would have no effect on his psyche. He'd seen, and experienced, far too much pain, suffering, death, to be affected by mere words.

As the saying went, '_sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me_'. After tonight, neither would.

Despite the similarities, however, he could already see the universe beginning to deviate from the course of the original. Small changes here and there that were already coming about due to his meddling – the time spent under the care of Minerva, the reactions of Dumbledore, the fact that he had actually been delivered with a meeting, rather than the measly letter of his last universe. The most remarkable difference, however, was Petunia's attitude towards him. When her husband and child were present, she acted indifferently towards him, albeit without a single screech or utterance of the word '_freak_'. When they weren't, however... it was almost as if he had a second mother, constantly being cared for, fussed over this time actually treated like a child, rather than the waste of space, the useless creature that he had been lead to believe he was at this age in his past life. A little passive legilimency had revealed the depths of her guilt at the way she had treated his mother in the past, and her desire for reconciliation with her wayward little sister. She reasoned that by treating him, Lily's only child, as if he were her own, she could gain some sort of forgiveness from her sister when she eventually wore up (and there was little doubt in Petunia's mind that she would, the woman showing a surprising amount of faith in magical healthcare). He could only hypothesise that, in the past, she had blamed the Wizarding world as a whole for the death of her sister, who she still loved despite her actions as a teenager, and that in turn had led to her neglecting him as a child, rather than acting as a mother.

So deep was the scope of her growing affection for him that she managed to overcome the notice-me-not wards that Harry had set up over the door of his cupboard to elicit some form of privacy from Dursleys, on a fairly regular basis, in order to attempt to care for him.

It was bloody annoying.

It wouldn't do for her to open the cupboard to try to check up on him and discover some of the not-very-inconspicuous runework sustaining his creation that occupied the far wall, or see that he was absent whilst he was supposed to be asleep, which had almost happened once or twice in the first few weeks of his stay. To combat this, Harry had painstakingly constructed a runic array around the frame of the door, a process that had taken rather too long due to his shaky coordination with his new body. Being small just didn't agree with him. The array worked two-fold: firstly, it alerted him to anyone that came near the door with the intention of opening it, just in case he was doing something inside the cupboard itself, and secondly, should the door ever open whilst he wasn't present, said opener would see what they expected to see, be it an empty cupboard or a sleeping child. He had taken the idea from the ward schemes found in some Egyptian tombs, with his own modifications of course, and not linked to a vast collection of lethal traps like the necropoli of the desert often were.

The back wall of the cupboard was the work of a true master of the art, acting in a similar manner to the portal of platform nine and three quarters, save for the fact that only he was keyed in to be allowed through, and it didn't have the sustained wormhole-like effect present in King's Cross (for that would have taken far more effort to set up, and would have conflicted with the remaining charms). Connected to this array was another, something akin to the spatial mechanics present in the Room of Requirement – he had folded space-time through an extensive mix of muggle quantum mechanics and his own, peculiar brand of dimensional magicks, turning a small alcove that he'd hollowed into the natural brick into something… more, connected yet removed from the real world. It was quite difficult to explain in simple terms, or in any terms really, without delving into the depths of superstring theory, a subject that no one, not even Harry, truly understood.

As Robert Feynman said (would say? He gave the lecture in 1985, after all, some three years from the present day. Harry dismissed the random tangential thought. Paradoxes and the true nature of time were… confusing, to say the least, and not a subject he wanted to delve into at this moment, or if possible, ever again. He'd messed with powers far higher than himself with his actions, and to do so again would be like saying a massive 'fuck you', finger and all, directly to the fates themselves; not a good life decision, if you liked your soul intact and not scattered through eternity.) – 'if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics.'

Harry had made extensive use of this particular construct later on in the third war, as it provided him with an excellent way of staying hidden from the Dark powers that sought him, and a way to plan his operations in peace. Unfortunately, he'd had to abandon the method after the Death Eaters finally figured out a way to detect and track the distinct, unmaskable magical traces that the portals emitted, beginning to trap the entrances in the hopes of capturing him whilst entering and leaving, as attempting to apparate or portkey into and out of magically folded space was not a good idea. It was only by sheer dumb luck that he'd evaded them, having far too much faith in his own abilities, and an equal lack of faith in the capabilities of Voldemort's underlings. A mistake he would not make again, if he could help it. Arrogance was very unbecoming of the Leader of the Light, even if he did have the right to be at times.

Still, this was 1982, not 2045, and the muggle neighborhood that he was located in wasn't exactly a hotbed of Dark activity, from anyone that wasn't him, at least.

In this space was his quasi-permanent base of operations, until he moved out or the Dursleys saw fit to move him into the Dudley's second bedroom, which had not happened until the summer before his second year in the previous timeline. Still, you never know, a little mind magic here, a few compulsions there, and he could get it, and anything else he wanted really. If he desired it, his 'family' would be eaten out of the palm of his hand, and a small, Dark, part of him did, if only for revenge for all the abuse that he had (would?) suffered as a child. His logical mind, the dominant section, stayed his hand, for to do so would be likely to attract undue attention to his operations. No, Harry would be keeping the Dark magic to a minimum, at least until he had a chance to examine the wards that Dumbledore had placed around the house.

A fair amount of space went unused, much of what he had done taken up by his ritual bases and rudimentary potions laboratory, empty or barely-filled jars of common ingredients lining portable teak shelves, a small iron cauldron bubbling with an elixir that smelled of death, that white emptiness at the end of all things. Over the past few months, he had been in back and forth communication with a shady black market dealer in the depths located in the depths of Knocturne Alley, using a series of back channels to funnel some of the money from his trust vault untraceably in return for objects of a less-than-legal nature, and other, more mundane items. Unfortunately, his eight hundred galleon per year trust wouldn't stretch too far in the grand scheme of things, so he'd had to skimp on all but the essentials to save money, hence the current… sparseness of his work area.

There were only a few things that he'd spent a significant amount on, the most expensive of which being an ornate crimson bladed knife of red obsidian, with a single sculpted piece of dragon-bone ivory for the handle, carved from the tailbone of a Vesuvian Ashwing. At one hundred and fifty galleons, or around seven thousand British Pounds, it was currently the most expensive item he owned, bar the items in dimensional storage, which he would require a wand of his own to access. It looked quite out of place, all things considered, sitting at the edge of his oak desk in its bone-white sheath, sitting atop of piles of paper, which were covered in arithmantic calculations. Had his dealer not sent a photograph of the item in question, he wouldn't have even considered buying such an expensive thing, instead opting to wait the time it took for the man to obtain a similar, but cheaper option.

It was lucky for him, that the dealer had no idea what he truly had in his possession, or he never would have laid eyes on the thing.

The dagger was no ordinary blade, no mere cutting tool or letter opener. No, it was an ancient Roman _sanguisica_ – _'blood knife'_, used in blood magic and self-sacrificial magicks. It was over two thousand years old, all-but indestructible, surviving the fall of the Republic, after which the_ fraternitatis ex sanguis_ – '_Brotherhood of Blood_', had been hunted down and executed by the newly formed Empire, which sought to bring all magic under the command of the emperor, killing all those who resisted. Their relics had been scattered throughout the lands, usually ending up in the hands of ancient vampires, collectors, or the few human mages that knew their original purposes.

The dagger was not worth one hundred and fifty galleons.

It was worth far more, in the realms of tens of thousands, completely invaluable to a skilled practitioner of the Art. There were very few still in existence, and with it, and the powerful magic that permeated the very air around it, Harry could bring his extensive knowledge of blood magic to new heights, performing feats that he had only theorised in the past, or read about in one of his grimoires that went into detail on the subject. If only he'd had access to one in the other timeline, then, just maybe, things might have gone differently. He was truly fortunate to have stumbled across it.

It was today that the knife would see its first use.

On his main ritual base, the largest of seven, was a circle painted in ash, entwined with the three pointed Celtic symbol of Death. At its center was a woven triangle of threstral and unicorn hair (who said knitting would never be useful in magic?), the essences of creatures of death and life serving as the activator for the ritual that would call for a meeting with Death, the being that ended all beings, from which the new were born. The last thing that was required was a single drop of blood from the summoner.

Harry was not nervous at meeting a timeless, immortal being, the manifestation of a force that governed all things. Not in the slightest.

Who was he kidding?

The slightest misspoken phrase, a comment made in the spur of the moment, could spell his ejection from the Eternal Stream. There was a reason why mortals did not deal with Death. History was littered with reminders of those who had tried, and failed, to conquer a being belonging to realms far beyond their own comprehension.

Ending up like the Peverells, betrayed, broken and alone, was not one of Harry's goals in life.

He drew the dagger, its blade scraping against its bone sheath, and with the tip, a razor-sharp point, pricked the end of his index finger, a small bead of red life welling up out of the wound.

Slowly, oh so slowly, it fell, descending the sixty centimeters from his skin onto the summoning tapestry in what seemed like an eternity. The circle pulsed once, his blood being spread out across the matrix, and all was still.

A minute.

Two minutes.

Harry was starting to wonder if he had performed it wrong, made a mistake in the drawing of the knot, or otherwise fudged the delicate process in one of its steps.

He needn't have worried.

All of a sudden, an unearthly, bone-chilling wind whipped up around his space, a place where there physically could not be any wind, as isolated as it was from the rest of the physical world, sending his calculations and diagrams fluttering around the area like crazed pigeons.

Above the center of the circle was an impossibly thin black line, drawn vertically in the air, perhaps three times as long as he was tall (which, in all honesty, wasn't that high. Two, two and a half meters perhaps). It was an abnormality, something not of the mortal plane, as if someone had taken a slice of the void and imposed it on reality.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the line began to contort, twisting waveforms writhing around one another as if coiled snakes, their amplitudes growing with each passing second, randomly spiking with increasing frequency.

Finally, with a last great tug on the fabric of reality, the line split apart, opening up like some kind of demonic eye, a perfect black oval suspended in midair.

Harry felt a great presence, something wholly inhuman, far more powerful than he, who would grow to be possibly the most powerful mage in recent history. It was all-pervading, reaching into and harmonising with the depths of his being, that final inevitability singing to his old yet young soul like the sirens of Ancient Greece, calling to passing sailors to entice them to their doom.

The source of this presence, the thing that stepped from behind the veil, was not what he expected.

There was no scythe, no long black cloak, or skeletal fingers. There was no skull, or rasping voice. Indeed, it was quite the opposite of anything that he could have fathomed.

Out of the blackness stepped a young woman that looked no older than twenty years old, long red hair the colour of blood cascading down onto a white summer dress. She had no shoes, or much else really, the only other feature of note being a thin white scar just below her collarbone, almost unnoticeable to anything but a trained eye, shaped in the classic symbol of infinity, a sideways eight, one loop larger than the other. She looked so out of place in the sparseness of his living space, her very being looking like perfection personified, so beautiful that it was unnatural.

Harry didn't quite know what to say.

Death looked on in amusement. She'd been waiting a long time for this meeting, or as close to long as the immortal, timeless manifestation of a universal force could be. Of all the souls that she'd seen enter the mortal plane, he was by far the most interesting, one of the only mortals, in fact, that she observed with her conscious mind on a regular basis. All others fell into the depths of Her subconscious, or what equated to it (for she was aware of Her entire being at once), managing the cycle of life and death, and ensuring the continuation of the Eternal Stream.

Here he was, staring speechless at Her physical form, which was quite ironic considering his own, barely two year old frame. Her sisters had been interfering with his life for as long as he had lived, a welcome distraction from the tedium that came from managing the cosmos, and now, finally, it was Her turn, or at least the beginning of it.

Destiny, laying out his life before he had even been born, with that thrice-damned prophecy, made long before Sybil Trelawny ever spoke it, keeping the pretender from Her grasp. If not for the Accords, She would have struck him down the moment he made his first horcrux, damn the consequences for his immortal soul. Such things were an affront to everything She held sacred.

Magicka, of course, had altered the course of the corrupted ritual, so that it would achieve something close to its original purpose, instead of wiping out countless trillions of souls from existence. That whole ordeal had been extremely stressful for Death, having to deal with an entire universe full of displaced beings, choosing to dissipate their essences into energy, which she fed to their respective counterparts across the universes. Had anyone been paying attention, they would have noticed a fractional increase in magical power within every single living being in the universe, even the mundanes (those who wizards called '_Muggles_'),

Unfortunately, the same Accords that prevented Her from interfering with Her sister's domain, prevented Her from meeting with the boy by Her own will, needing a mortal to initiate first contact. Not many did these days, after She had obliterated a host of Dark wizards that thought they could control Her. The impudence of some wizards. One does not simply control Death, for Death is the master at the end of all things. All things, with time, would eventually return to Her. Humans did have a very interesting anatomy, however, and their innards could make such beautiful pictures when splattered over a castle wall, an image made all the sweeter by the sheer arrogance of the people they had once belonged to.

Here he was, Her champion, finally meeting Her face to face, and he was stricken speechless by Her appearance of all things. There were far more things to be worried about than that.

Harry snapped out of his stupor, falling to one knee in an instant, head bowed. He was quite nervous, a fact that he hoped would not manifest itself in his voice. Now was not the time for his toddler's lisp to come out in full, meeting with an ageless, immortal personification of a universal force.

"My lady Death, I apologise for my rudeness in not bowing sooner." He spoke clearly, without a hint of the nervousness that broiled within. "I was merely shocked. You were... not what I was expecting."

"Oh?" Death raised a single, perfect eyebrow. Her face was a mask of impassiveness, though inside she was giggling at the strange child before her. "And what, pray tell, were you expecting, little mortal?"

Harry gulped. "Cloak… Black… Skeleton…Scythe…" He murmured, his lisp coming out with a vengeance, most of his words unintelligible as he wondered if he had made another grave mistake in his lifetime of blunders and errors.

Silence.

Death laughed, a sweet, tinkling sound that reverberated across the cavern. "That always comes back to bite me in the arse." She breathed deeply (interesting, universal forces in physical form had to breathe?), calming her features. "I mean really, I scare a few mortals several thousand years ago out of boredom, and I'm forever immortalised as a scythe-wielding dementor look-alike! Despite your fallacies as a race, I must admit, you humans are quite amusing sometimes."

"Wha-"

Oh very well done Harry. Absolutely perfect. A shining example of eloquence and poise.

He never was one for talking to women.

Death laughed again. "Oh my sweet child, my Champion. You have no idea how long I've watched you" She bent down and scooped his small frame into her arms. "You will find your Styxian water beside your cauldron. You needn't worry about the preparation of it, I've taken care of it all. All I ask in return is one, small... favour."

Harry gulped. One of major morals of most Wizarding fairy tales was to never, under any circumstances, make open ended deals with the Fae (or similar beings, for Death was far more powerful than any Fae, save perhaps the Summer and Winter Queens). Ever. If he accepted at this point in time, he could be called to do literally anything, even so far as being bound as a slave, for all eternity. No, Harry did not like this one bit.

"And what would this favour entail, Lady Death?"

"Nothing so far as you fear, my Prince. Despite what you may have heard, I am not quite that Machiavellian. I just ask for time, twelve hours of your company, to be collected… at a later date. No more, no less."

Surprisingly agreeable. And yet, Harry felt as though he was missing something.

"And these twelve hours, what will happen in them?"

Death giggled, sounding more like a teasing schoolgirl than a force of nature. "That's for me to know, and you to find out. I'm sure you'll find it most… enjoyable, to say the least."

Was Death flirting with him?

No. Definitely not. He was two, for God's sake! He screwed his round features into a frown. Thirty years celibacy, and general lonesomeness, had done wonders for his ability to read people, especially women.

"I… agree," Harry stated, more than a little hesitantly. He really did not know what he was getting himself into here

"Wonderful!" Death set Harry back down on the floor. "Oh, we are going to have so much fun together, you and I. Believe me when I say this Harry, this meeting was but the first of many. I see many great things ahead of you, terrible things. You'd do best to prepare yourself." She bent down, and placed a chaste kiss on his brow, directly over his scar, and turned to leave through the portal, that same emptiness from which She came.

She turned Her head to look at him once more, as if remembering something.

"Oh, and Harry, please deal with that upstart and his soul phylacteries sooner this time round. His very existence offends me, not the least due to the havoc he caused for me last time."

And with that, she left, vanishing into the blackness of the void, which closed swiftly behind her.

Harry sighed. That had been an ordeal. Death was interesting, to say the least. Some of her words were odd, yet seemingly quite deliberately chosen. He couldn't quite puzzle out their meaning, yet anyway. He'd have to take some time to analyse the memory, when he obtained a pensieve, which, if he had his way, would be soon.

On the other side of the room his cauldron broiled, bubbling heavily as he approached. It was now in the final stages of brewing, and smelled not of dry bone, but a distinct aroma of bitter almonds. True to her word, there was a small vial of pale blue liquid on the shelf directly behind the cauldron; pure, distilled water taken directly from the River Styx, the final ingredient for the active agent of the Blessing of Achilles. As he poured it in, the brew settled, turning a soft, near transparent shade of blue (azure mist, an artist would have called it).

Harry appropriated one of bottles from his shelves, filling it with the entire contents of the small cauldron, before corking it as he headed once again for his ritual circles, picking up his knife along the way. He sat down on his smallest one, a Harry-sized circle perhaps one and a half metres in diameter, etched with a pentagram that would correspond to each of his limbs; head, arms and legs. Before it could start, however, he had to perform a most unpleasant task; carving the sealing rune, the '_Aegishjalmar_', or '_Helm of Awe_', an ancient Nordic rune of protection that was decidedly more stable than the original Greek, onto his body. It would mark the spot on his body to which the magicks of the ritual would bind, and, consequently, would be the only place on his person that would be susceptible to physical harm. Normally, Harry would not have baulked at body carving, being an avid practitioner of blood magic in the past. However, his new body had a decidedly lower pain tolerance than his old, and was much more fragile, a result of not having undergone years of physical conditioning and abuse.

It would hurt like a bitch.

With a small huff, he drew his blade from its ivory sheath and settled its crimson point just above his navel, the point carefully chosen, despite its potential vulnerabilities, so that the ritual could be combined with other blood magicks in the future – being the site of the connection between mother and child, the navel was one of three loci of magical pathways, the other two being the centre of the spine and the base of the brain. Of the three, an injury to the navel was least likely to cause serious, permanent physical or mental damage, hence his choice. With a single swift motion, he cut a straight line downwards, the knife carving his skin with almost no resistance whatsoever.

He let out a small cry of pain, and the knife seemed to hum with what seemed like joy, at finally being able to fulfill its purpose once again.

Three more times he repeated this motion, leaving an eight pointed cross directly over his belly button, lines of red on otherwise unblemished skin. Now came the more fiddly part. On each point had to be drawn three lines, perpendicular to the main, starting out small and growing in size as they moved outwards, forming what would look like a set of three broken octagons, with each vertex missing, the sides not quite touching. With utmost care, Harry did this, making sure that his small hand did not falter a single time. One last remained; three lines protruding from the tip of each point on the cross, looking almost like an octet of tridents carved into his skin.

Finally, some thirty minutes after he started, the rune was complete, and the ritual could begin in earnest.

Lying down on the stone circle, Harry uncorked the bottle and slowly, ever so slowly, poured it onto himself, the lip of the bottle directly over the centre of the rune. It collected in his navel, and the, gradually, spread to the rest of his body, looking like a thin blue film coating white skin.

Closing his eyes as he lay spread-eagled on the ritual circle, he waited for the liquid to finish coating his skin, and braced himself for what he knew was about to occur.

It began as a warmth, a slow burning just underneath the surface of his flesh.

The warmth grew in intensity, becoming a spark, a flame, a blaze, an inferno.

Harry blacked out, knowing nothing but agony.

* * *

**As always, if you enjoyed, follow, favourite, or maybe even leave a review with a smiley face on the end? It always warms an author's heart to see positive feedback :D If you spot any errors, or plot bunnies that might have passed me by when reading it, be sure to let me know.**

**Until next time!  
**

**11/04/2015 Update: Some parts of this chapter have been revised, including an explanation of why Harry chose the navel as his weak point, something many of you demanded in the reviews. The next chapter is nearly finished, but I hit a massive wall in the form of writers block with one of the scenes in it, with interactions that I just couldn't quite get right. I sort of lost the will to write for a while, but it should be out within the next week or so.**

**Aside from that, updates will be kind of slow until the summer - I have GSCE examinations that I have to focus on revising for, which begin on May 12th and end on the same day in June. After that though, I'm free, and have four months to do whatever the hell I wish :D**


	7. Chapter 7 - Reflections & Self Discovery

**It's been a while, hasn't it?**

**As always, I don't own Harry Potter in any way, shape or form. That pleasure, and all the money that accompanies it, belongs to J. , much to my eternal chagrin.**

**Anyway, on with the story.**

* * *

**Chapter Seven – Self Discovery**

Harry woke up with a start. He was still bound to the circle, which was now black and dead, the magicks that composed it having burned out when the ritual finished. He felt… different.

Stronger.

He couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what the difference in his perception was, it was just a sense, a vague feeling of power, invincibility even, as if he could challenge the world itself and come out the victor.

Naturally, some testing was in order.

So, for the next few hours, Harry channelled his inner Hermione, and spent much his time trying to damage himself in all manner of different ways, starting off small, with cutlery filched from the drawers in the house and a small conjured flame. His choosing to do so was rather lucky, for it turned out he _could_ in fact be harmed in some ways, by his own magic at the very least, a fact that the purpling burn on his hand was a testament to. He shuddered at the thought of what could have happened if he had jumped straight into testing with powerful magic. Whether this fact would translate to other people's magic, he wasn't sure – the texts he'd read on the subject were rather vague at times, or incomplete, often showing the wear and tear of many thousands of years. The few sources that he had accessed didn't go into detail (or hadn't thought to test) what could and could not damage a person who had performed it. It was this element of ambiguity and uncertainty that worried Harry, assuring himself that, despite the added layer of protection, his offensively and defensively balanced duelling forms would not be altered.

Overconfidence killed, a lesson that the Light had learned the hard way many times over during the war.

On the plus side, he seemed to be all-but completely impervious to damage from a non-magical medium, or spells that inflicted physical damage, like cutting curses. He'd have to test it later on, when he had access to his wands and staves, for thoroughness and discovery of potential hindrances were the key to the success of any plan, scheme or preparation.

Despite the worries plaguing his thoughts, and the desire to discover his new limits, Harry felt good. Things were looking up in life – preparations for the future were beginning to take shape, he was healthy, much more so than the average two year old, and Petunia was treating him well, as strange as that seemed to him. The same could not be said for the other two, however, who were treating him as badly as ever, on the rare occasion that he did see them. From his memories, as faint as they were at this point, soon the beatings would start, Vernon opting to relieve his stress at the falling in profits of Grunnings (a major supplier of drill bits and pick heads) due to the closure of coal mines and the mining strikes that were currently occurring on his _freak _nephew.

He would never have to suffer through that again, and the resulting consequences that would come as a result of it.

In his previous lifetime, Harry had been… stunted, restrained, mostly due to his treatment at the hands of the Dursleys as a child, the beatings and malnutrition not only inhibiting his physical growth (he'd only ever reached a measly five foot six, compared to the six foot two of Ron, or even the five ten of Hermione), but the development of his magic as well. He'd had massive trouble controlling his magical output in his youth, with his magical pathways highly distorted or damaged, so much so that he would often either fail to cast a new, unfamiliar spell by under powering it, or wasting magic in massively overpowering it, which incidentally, considering the size of his core, brought him down to 'normal' levels in terms of magical stamina. One of the most dramatic incidents that was caused by this was his accidental obliteration of half of the Auror training academy in Abergavenny, Wales, with a rudimentary fire spell. Though no one was severely injured, it served as a wakeup call to his instructors, who had recommended he attend sessions at St Mungo's to correct the problem. It was there that the problem was first identified, and measures had begun to attempt to repair the damage. It had taken years of intensive therapy, potions prescriptions and self-meditation for him to find some semblance of control, to overcome the (literal) scarring of his troubled childhood. His back had been repaired from the web of harsh scars left by the belt and cane of Vernon, and most of his bones had to be broken and reset, having been healed wrongly by his magic.

It was not a pleasant experience, to say the least.

Even after all the therapy, there were some areas of magic that he simply could not perform, like the animagus transformation. He had the talent, there was no question about that, his father having passed it on to him in his genetics. It was the final stage of finding the beast, the inner 'meeting' with his primal side, that he couldn't complete, much to his disappointment. He'd spent a fair amount of time attempting it, following his father's (and the other Marauders') notes on the subject, went into detail on both methods of attaining it - the animagus revealing potion, and discovery through occlumency, the latter of which was overtly superior to the former. Indeed, the only reason the potion was mentioned at all was the fact that Pettigrew had had to use it, lacking the mental fortitude and discipline of his father or Sirius. At first, he'd dedicated himself to the occlumency method, as he'd been quite proficient in the subject, but steadily grew more frustrated at the lack of progress, until, after two years, he'd caved in and asked Minerva to procure him the potion on one cold winter's evening while she was around for dinner with his family. Instead of revealing his form, or the nothingness that people without the talent experienced, however, he underwent something akin to a psychedelic hallucination, a series of flashing lights and disorienting colours that he could make neither heads nor tails of, coupled with a splitting headache that lasted until the end of the week. The revelation had been highly disappointing, and he had resigned himself to never being able to achieve what most great wizards and witches that were immortalised in the annals of history could, forever denied a part of himself.

Now though, with his new, infant body and completely undamaged magical core and pathways, it was likely that he would finally be able to achieve it after all this time, to convene with his primal side and discover aspects of his being that had lain untouched for over eighty years.

Maybe, just maybe, he could even attempt it now. After all, it was simple meditation, something that he'd been practising for almost three quarters of a century. The idea grew ever more attractive to Harry as he mulled it over in his mind; he had nothing pressing to do with his time at the moment, for the other rituals would take longer to procure the necessary reagents, and blood magic would have to wait until he was slightly older to begin properly, to allow his body to develop and settle.

Dispelling the conjured blocks that he was using to throw himself off of in his experiments with a small wave of his hand, he made towards the far wall of his cavern, exiting into the tight confines of the cupboard under the stairs. Sitting on the rough wool blanket and thin mattress that adorned the floor of the tight space, he assumed a lotus position, small legs crossed, arms bent inwards towards one another, and closed his eyes, sinking into a deep meditative trance.

* * *

Everything was dark.

Harry could see nothing, not even his own body (which was how he knew that the trance was working, the mindscape, and fully functioning faux-body being part of the process). No stars or moon to indicate the presence of night-time, or light at all in fact, just blackness.

He tried a simple _Lumos_, the most basic spell in any witch or wizard's arsenal, even when wandless. There was no reaction, not even a trickle of magic flowing through his not-body. It wasn't really surprising, in all honesty; this was a construct of his mind, a part of himself that he held no sway over at a conscious level, so it would be fair to reason that be had no power here, no ability to break the laws that governed it with magic.

This was not reality.

No.

This was the realm of the beast.

The blackness wasn't _emptiness, _per say, not like the void between universes had been. He could still hear and feel and smell (and probably taste too, if he were so inclined to test it), as if he were still present in the real world, rather than a creation of the basest elements of his psyche.

It was extremely odd. From what he had read on the occlumency process, one was supposed to be place in, or near to natural habitat of their form, to undergo a 'journey of self- discovery and enlightenment', to only discover and become one with their primal side once it had been completed. Or some shit to that effect. Harry wasn't an expert on the subject, having ceased his research upon discovering that his was the magical equivalent to a eunuch in the area. The tea that he had learned to make while visiting Tibet on his travels, from the monks who happened to be perhaps the most skilled at meditation and self-discovery of anyone on the planet, however, had stayed with him forever.

What he wouldn't give for a nice cup of _po cha _tea right now. Unfortunately, both yak butter and tea leaves seemed to be rather scarce in his mind realm.

Harry sat on the ground, which seemed to be some sort of cold stone, and began to ponder the odd situation that he was in, the most recent in the series of decidedly weird events that had occurred since his travelling back in time. He wracked his mind for an animal, any animal that could possibly live in conditions such as these; the darkness, the cold, dry air that smelled as thinness, almost as if he were on a mountain of sorts, or at a high altitude, which couldn't possibly be correct considering the blackness of space around him. Strangest of all, however, was the faint metallic scent, ozone, reminding him of storms and warm summer rain. He drew a blank. In all his years of dealing with all manner of creatures, both dark and light, he had never once come across something as strange as this. It was quite disconcerting actually, the conflicting impressions that he was getting for the place messing with his mind; the oppressive, cave-like darkness, coupled with the scents of the open skies, the feeling of freedom and that slow, constant thrumming of the air, like an enormous heartbeat.

It simply should not be.

He searched around the area, feeling nothing but cold bare stone and patches of earth at his feet, a few scarce twigs snapping as he walked. This was not how it was supposed to work, not at all. He was at a loss for what to do, where to go. How were you supposed to find an animal when no such animal seemed to exist? This was definitely not supposed to be how the process worked, at all.

Seating himself once more upon the icy stone, he cast his mind backwards to the words of the old Tibetan head monk responsible for allowing him into the temple, as he travelled on his journey searching for knowledge to hold back the oncoming tides of darkness. At the time, they had seemed irrelevant, empty wisdom from a man of peace to a man of war, useless in his pursuit of ways of stemming evil flooding from Europe.

Now though, forty nine years later by the chronology of his life, they finally made some shred of sense.

'_To truly master the world, you first must master yourself.'_

Perhaps self-mastery was the key in this situation, and his lack thereof the reason why his form had chosen to remain hidden.

So, who was he? Who was Harry Potter?

To be honest, it depended heavily on who you asked, for many titles had been given to him over the years for his deeds, from individuals on both sides of the fence. He was Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, wonder-child of wizarding Britain. He was the Mage of Storms, feared by the Dark for his ruthlessness, known for single-handedly massacring entire battalions of men and dark creatures with naught but a few spells. He was a hero, a monster, a saviour, a lover. He was a freak. He was the Hope-In-The-Dark-Times, a title given to him by the Native American tribes that he fought with against the oncoming hordes, a title that lost its meaning as all of his allies were picked off and killed, until he was the only remaining fighter for the Light.

He was many things, and yet, none of these titles, these actions truly defined him.

Perhaps '_who'_ was the wrong question, with the 'identity' of an individual being a mere reflection of what others think of them. No, the question he should be asking was '_what'._

What was Harry Potter? What made him tick?

And to that question, Harry truly had no idea, for there was no single idea or entity that could encapsulate what he was.

He was brave, impossibly so, having lived through years of horrific war, trapped in a world governed by his enemies, with no one to turn to but himself. He laughed in the face of adversity, not fleeing from it as most would, but instead welcoming it like a brother. He had faced so much over his long years that, at this point, it was expected. In all honesty, Harry Potter and normal was an oxymoron, the two unable to simultaneously exist in the same frame of reality, cancelling each other out, usually with large explosions and chaos being the result.

He was, when the situation called for it, reckless, unafraid to take risks to achieve a worthy end, and, more often than not, usually came out on top, despite all the odds. Some had remarked of his ridiculous luck, both good and bad in equal quantities, Harry himself included. He wouldn't be surprised if he found out that some great cosmic entity was constantly screwing with the probabilities in his life for their own amusement (and for all he knew, this could very well be the case – if Death existed as a metaphysical conscious entity, why couldn't Fortune?).

If you were in Hogwarts, and still thought along house lines and their traits, you could think of him as the quintessential Gryffindor.

That was not to say, however, that he was restricted to such narrow definitions of a human being. Despite what one Ronald Weasley thought, people did not neatly fit into four distinct categories, perfectly conforming to the expectations that meaningless labels gave them, just like the fact that, in the case of Hogwarts, the house did not make the person. No one house was the only place in which 'their' qualities could be found, Hermione Granger and himself being clear examples of this.

Many years before, the Sorting Hat had told him that 'Slytherin would help him on his way to greatness'. At the time, he hadn't quite realised what it was saying, thinking that it was merely talking about the house itself, which, after his encounters with the ferret, seemed utterly unappealing to him. Now, however, he realised what it truly meant – that the qualities that a Slytherin should ideally embody (for not all did) would help him become great, and in Harry's case, keep him alive. One couldn't simply charge into situations unheeded and expect to come out unscathed. No, it was only was with careful planning and a fair amount of cunning that a person could survive dangerous encounters, a lesson that he should have learned long before he did.

He was cunning, manipulative, selfish, always judging people and their actions and valuing them based on their worth to him and his goals, discarding the useless, the frivolities to further his ambitions. Bending people to his will, into following him and his ideologies was something that he'd always been good at, having a certain innate charisma, a flair for leadership that manifested itself over and over in his life, and in many cases, and lead to the deaths of good people, sacrificing themselves for him, though he often felt that such faith was undeserved.

As much as they reviled one another, in this way, he and Tom were very much alike, the perfect Slytherins.

The fact that he was intelligent was without a doubt. Even when he was a child, his teachers noticed his extreme intelligence, something that came back to haunt him in the form of the Dursleys. Unhappy with any child being considered better than their Diddykins, let alone the worthless freak who, according to his primary school teachers, was a prodigy, the Dursleys, or more specifically, Vernon, inflicted savage beatings upon his younger self whenever he got higher marks or did well in a test. This, of course, lead to a self-perpetuating cycle of mediocrity which carried over into his Hogwarts years, his younger self subconsciously unwilling to apply himself for fear of punishment, and often deliberately failing, or barely scraping passes, which in turn put him further behind his peers in terms of knowledge.

Once he'd actually applied himself, which only came about with the return of Voldemort in his fourth year, he showed remarkable aptitude for most areas of magic, even being remarked as a genius, which had led to some… interesting arguments with Hermione, who was far too used to being the top of the class, only for her best friend to often usurp her. Indeed, his brilliance was only matched by perhaps three people alive that he knew of: Hermione Granger, Albus Dumbledore, and Tom Marvolo Riddle (who, oddly enough, were all British).

Harry was a living, breathing testament to the idea that knowledge is power.

As for the 'Hufflepuff' qualities, well, he'd spent twenty years dedicated to a single task, slaving away every single hour of the day in obtaining reagents, making preparations, performing calculations and constructing ritual arrays, in the pursuit of one, ultimate goal. If that wasn't diligence, he didn't know what was.

A popular adage in western cultures was that genius and talent count be overcome by hard work – one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration and all the rest. It was true, mostly. Someone with average natural capabilities that worked hard and dedicated themselves would usually surpass a talented, but lazy individual (as many were, for if an individual is never mentally challenged, they never learn to work hard). Harry, however, belonged to the secret option C category, one of the rare few that had both qualities, in his case by necessity.

The people in category C were the ones you had to look out for.

He was not wholly Light, nor Dark in his magical or moral inclination, preferring instead to consign himself to shades of Grey, refusing to limit himself solely to any one path of magic, a certain pragmatism born from a lifetime of danger from all sources. It took a strong will to be able to handle both without being torn apart at the seams.

He was not an idealist, someone that would themselves firmly to abstract principles based on a sense of moral superiority. He was a realist, and did what was needed to be done in the simplest manner and most effective manner possible, to achieve his goals, and uphold his tenants of self, even if what needed to be done constituted the wholesale slaughter of his enemies. In most cases, especially where civilians were concerned, he would take the path that had the fewest casualties, but, sometimes, as disgusting as it may seem, sacrifices had to be made for, as Albus would put it, 'The Greater Good'.

It was quite ironic, considering how he'd despised that phrase when he was younger. War did that to you – taught you the harsh truths of the world.

He had a strong sense of justice, and, despite his long years, the most important of his personal tenants held strong. For all the countless lives that he'd taken, he had never once slain an innocent by his own hand. That wasn't to say, however, that he was not above manipulating people, or breaking the laws of a country to do what had to be done. No, sometimes, a little manipulation had to be performed, for the good of the people, and the human race as a whole.

Looking back, he could understand and empathise with most of the decisions that Albus had made, though no living being, human, creature or fae could truly comprehend the mind of the doddery old man with far too many names and titles (Harry conveniently ignored the fact that the very same description could easily apply to him). It was with experience, not age, that wisdom came, and Harry had all too much of both.

To his friends, and his allies, he was an immovable object, a rock that could be depended on in the gravest of times, someone that would always stand by those that held his loyalty, so long as they proved worthy of it.

To his enemies, though he was only one man, he was an unstoppable force, a butcher, someone that would not hesitate to annihilate those who crossed him with extreme prejudice.

There was no one word or phrase that could encapsulate the being that was Harry Potter, no one adjective to describe him. He really was a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, even to himself.

Perhaps he was approaching it wrongly. Perhaps, instead of thinking about what made Harry Potter, he should think of what _would_ make Harry Potter – his goals, and ambitions, the very things that he had spent twenty years preparing for, before going further than any wizard had gone before, and throwing himself back in time to achieve them.

First and foremost among the ever growing list, was to save wizarding society, and by extension, the entire world, from the fate that awaited it, to save it from itself, even if he had to shake it to its very foundations to do so, all whilst correcting as many of the blunders that he'd made the first time round as he could, saving as many of his friends and allies as possible. Indeed, most of his other goals and sub-goals stemmed off or were derived from this main one in some way.

However, only some of said sub-goals were or would soon be available for him to work towards, whilst some of the others would have to wait for a considerable amount of time. The most pressing of these were the remaining two rituals, which were of utmost importance that they were completed as soon as possible, as well as finding Hermione, who he knew lived and would soon go to school somewhere in the general area around Surrey. This time around, she would not be spending the first six years of her school life ostracised and alone, bullied by others for her intelligence and magical ability (which young children seemed to identify instinctually, marking out said magicals as _different_, to be feared). No, Harry would never let that happen, not so long as he had the power to stop it.

He could only begin to imagine what she could have been without the insecurities that she obtained from the ruthless harassment of the other girls in her primary school, without the crushing loneliness and desire to fit in, to not stand out from her peers. He was not going to manipulate her, he insisted to himself. He would never do that to Hermione, who had always been straight and honest with him, something that he appreciated, and returned in kind. No, he was merely going to guide her, help her fulfil her true potential. Before he was through with her, she would not only be the brightest witch of her generation, but of _any_ generation, her latent intelligence and her eidetic memory giving her the potential to rival, no, outstrip the achievements of Rowena Ravenclaw herself, the greatest witch of the modern era of magic. The ancient Scottish queen would be a candle to the inferno that Hermione would bring about.

Despite all of his grandiose ambitions and plots, however, there was still a small part of himself, deep inside, that desired to be 'just Harry', to take the fact that he sent himself back in time to have the opportunity to live a normal, happy life, removed from the decisions that would shape the course of history yet to come, removed from the responsibility of saving the world, no matter how singularly impossible and immoral it would be. Harry would never be normal – to be mundane, to be ordinary, simply was not an option for him, being perhaps the only person that could hold off the oncoming storm, the only person that had the foreknowledge and power to guide the world away from the horrors that awaited it.

In fact, Harry realised, this, small, selfish desire was a _weakness_, something that could cause him to hesitate at a crucial time, something that would play on his mind forever, unless he crushed it, here and now. One moment's hesitation could be the difference between success and failure, and when the fate of the world itself hung in the balance, failure was unacceptable.

It was high time that he overcame this last remnant of his troubled childhood.

He was _Harry Potter._

Everyone else knew that Harry Potter and normal didn't get along, and it was time he truly realised it himself.

He would never, ever be normal.

No.

He would be _great._

He would be a wizard mentioned in the same breath as Merlin, Moses, Gandalf the White, and all the other greatest mages and sorcerers that carved a name for themselves since the Severing of Atlantis. Long after he finally died (which wouldn't be any time soon, if he had anything to say about it), his memory would live on, his actions and deeds echoing across the halls of history, remembered forever by awestruck students and chocolate frog cards, his decisions having changed the course of the world.

It was in this, not through some bastardised black ritual or human-sacrifice-enabled soul magic, that he would be immortal.

And with that thought, that moment of enlightenment, there came a great rush of air, and the distinctive screech of steel on stone, snapping Harry from his trance within a trance. He opened his eyes suddenly, and marvelled.

It was no longer dark.

He was on a mountain, one of monstrous proportions, a stone-grey spear thrust into the heavens, towering high above its smaller brethren and the distant plains, which were a veritable ocean of pale green, an endless sea of tall grasses that broke upon the mountains in constant, wind-driven waves, visible to the naked eye even as high and as far away as he was.

Harry had been meditating upon a small plateau, no more than twenty metres across, on a section of the gargantuan mountain where the slope was far gentle than elsewhere, which, from the limited amount that he could see from his current vantage point, seemed to be riddle with caves, depressions and near-vertical cliff faces.

The sun was bright in the blue-grey sky, its radiance somewhat dulled by the altitude, and no clouds were present save one, far in the distance, a slate grey, almost black shape that promised chaos and lightning to everything unlucky enough to be caught beneath.

Said cloud, however, appeared to be moving towards him, at a thunderous pace.

More oddities, in an experience dominated by strange happenings.

Harry stared intently at the shape, trying his hardest to discern exactly _what_ it was, for he was certain, after a brief period of, scouring his memories, that no cloud, not even the few magical varieties that existed, would behave like the one before him.

As it approached, a great roar of sound echoed across the mountain range, something that sounded vaguely like the sound of a Muggle supersonic jet, but more natural, more rhythmic, almost like a great heartbeat.

Six beats.

Rest.

Six beats.

Rest.

As it came into full view, Harry's mind finally connected the dots.

The ozone.

The sounds.

The six beat pattern.

No.

It couldn't be.

And yet, it was.

Realisation hit Harry like a bolt of lightning, and left his mouth hanging wide open at the shock of what he was seeing before him.

* * *

**Sorry this took so long guys, I've been ill with a severe case of writers block for the past few months, on a scene in the next chapter that still has me stumped. I decided to split the chapter in two, because the chapter was becoming rather long, and there was a natural stopping point that didn't feel too forced. Cliffies 3**

**Who wants to take a guess as to what I'm hinting at? I bet none of you will guess correctly, since it isn't quite as obvious as it may seem at first.**

**Next chapter may take a while, since I have a whole ton of exams coming up in about a months time, after which I can do whatever. Also, chapters two and six have been altered, cleaning up some typos and expanding on sections of text that I felt were either lacking in description, or could use to add in details that contributed to the overall story.**


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